


Mad Angel Blues

by kittydesade



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-31
Updated: 2010-10-31
Packaged: 2017-10-13 00:08:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 67,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/130661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittydesade/pseuds/kittydesade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Martine's life began six years ago, as far as he knows. And it's a good life, with two wonderful women and a job that pays the bills, the only major downsides to his life are his inability to remember anything before the past six years and the migraines and aches that strike without warning. Then things get abruptly worse, with his primary, Alais, exhibiting odd flashes of hateful behavior and mysterious strangers claiming to know him from long ago. But it turns out that it's Joss's sheer stubbornness and faith in the people she loves gives him the strength and the direction to fight to keep the life he's built against both old brothers and old enemies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mad Angel Blues

I should be on TV.

This shit doesn't happen in the real world. This happens in movies you see in over-airconditioned theatres. TV shows you watch while eating your take-out spaghetti and then remember why you don't do that anymore. It doesn't happen to real people. It didn't happen to me.

Well, it did now. Is happening now. This is happening to me right now.

The bare bulb dangles over my head. It's plugged into the end of a bunch of wires, and it's not swinging like I remember it does in some forensic dramas now all fuzzy in my mind, but that's it. The rest of this could have been lifted right out of prime time. The bathroom is covered in blue paint that makes everything washed and pale. Blue paint over yellow paint over gray, all of it peeling in concentric swatches where people have chipped away at it. There's something about peeling paint that makes you want to scratch it with your nails. Peeling skin, too.

The mirror's dirty as hell. It's covered in things I don't want to know about; thank god I don't need to use the toilet. The soap's dirty, and it'd probably infect more than it cleans. There's graffiti all over the walls, the stall door. Most of it crude. Someone copied over a piece of verse. Looked like Blake. The tiles, or at least the ones that are left, are cracked and grungy. At least the water's running clear.

I let my hands splay on the corners of the sink and lean against the cold porcelain because I can't do anything else. I'm clutching at the sides because I can barely keep my balance. Staring at my face in the mirror tells me nothing. I look like a stranger. The flaps of skin are so jagged and torn that I can see slivers of glistening red muscle and yellow flecks of fatty tissue underneath. I don't even know how I know that. How do I know that?

There was a trick to walking up and down, navigating narrow spaces, and reaching for things in every angle at every corner of the plane. In heels as well. Alais duBois stretched her feet and rose up onto her toes as she inspected her face in the mirror for any signs of stress the past fourteen hours might have put on her. Her shift was almost over; she would be taxiing into Tompkins Regional from Kennedy soon and she wouldn't have to be on anything moving if she didn't want to be for three whole days. The prospect had strong appeal. But before she could relax, she had to keep her game face on for another few hours. She might not be on duty, but she was representing the company nonetheless.

Her blonde hair still lay flat and framed her face. Her makeup was intact and her eyes weren't bloodshot or tired, they were wide open. She could still put a smile on her face and not have spinach between her teeth or, more likely, pasta basil. Well enough.

Lois's eyes were on alert as she walked through the aisles, taking the trash and stowing it away. The extra vigilance of the flight attendant was something few of the passengers noticed, but she'd been lectured on several times over along with the rest of her shift. It hadn't been like this even five years ago. Alais sighed, buckled herself in as they crossed the edge of the water, came in for the landing. Watching the flow of passengers move past her, smiling and nodding as they left. Thank you for flying, enjoy your stay, have a lovely day, thank you for flying.

And then she was free, and passing through the checkpoints, the heinous security lines to board the plane and heading through customs, and there was Paula.

"Darling," she breathed a sigh of relief as her feet touched solid ground for the first time in five days. " _Cherie, ma petite coeur_. How do I survive without you."

Their embrace, by necessity, was more chaste than either woman would have liked it. A brief embrace, a peck on the cheek, and they could escape to their car without the pressure of stares or the weight of whispers at their back. Not that anyone stayed very long for gestures of affection, these days. Too much security at the airports.

"How was Paris?" Paula asked with a smile, knowing that the answer would be the same as it always was, unless Alais had had the time to spend with her family. Five days wasn't long enough, just a weekend off.

The blonde shook her head, deliberately mussing her hair with one hand for the simple desire to be a little more untidy. Paula laughed until Alais unbuttoned her blouse not one but two buttons down, at which point the taller woman blushed and looked away. Alais only smiled.

"Hot. We're having a heat wave this summer," she shook her head. "Summer. It is not yet summer, and we're having a heat wave. Ridiculous."

"It didn't look that hot..." Paula said, but at a quiet murmur and she didn't sound convinced. "Well, the weather report gave it as cool and clear for the next few days, so..."

"And I am at your disposal." Alais linked her arm through her lover's and sighed with relief as they made their way across the parking lot. Not too much relief. She still had to wear her heels until they were in the car and she could change, but would do, for now. "So. Where shall we go for lunch?"

There was a Sagebrush Saloon just down the highway, close enough that Alais could get something deep fried and slathered in dressing. Which was good, she said, because she was absolutely starved. You couldn't have decent food on a plane, it was impossible to keep anything good and healthy that long when you had such limits on space restrictions. Paula kept her peace and smiled, tolerant of her little tirades that varied only by degree and from a limited selection of subject matter every time she stepped off the plane. And it was useless to try and convince Alais to find another job because the truth was, she did love to fly, and to explore.

Paula, by contrast, was a homebody. Which fit with Alais in a way she hadn't expected. Coming home to an apartment that might have the lights on or off, the temperature somewhere between cool and roaring hot, and keeping quiet was highly recommended. The rest was good, but Paula kept her place cozy and there was always something clattering around. One of them in the kitchen, the television chattering away, cleaning. It called up happier memories of her homecomings from boarding school when she was little, her mother cooking all her favorites and her father bustling around making sure she was comfortable.

These days coming home meant Paula and Martine, even Joss, while her father associated with guilty squirming discomfort. He wouldn't have paid attention enough to know to get her to a restaurant and then straight home to rest after she landed.

Paula made food and water the first order of business. A cold glass of ice water and sliding into a booth that wasn't on a moving surface. And then a basket of onion rings and Alais finally felt like she could relax again, even as she felt the beginnings of a tension headache at her temples. Paula put the bottle of aspirin on the table before she'd even said anything.

"How is it you always know what to do?" Alais smiled, shaking out two tiny pills and popping them in her mouth before gulping down some water and slumping to the table, cheek pillowed against the cool surface. Paula just shook her head, chuckling.

"Because I know you." The pill bottle disappeared back into her purse, which resembled a backpack in size. "Doesn't seem as though it was a terrible flight, at least."

"It wasn't..." the smaller woman sat up again and leaned back, rubbing the tips of her neatly manicured fingers in slow circles at her temples. "Only long. It was the visit home that was... Difficult."

There was a world of meaning under that. Paula went for the simplest one, covering Alais's hand with hers and squeezing gently.

The onion rings arrived and saved Alais from explanation, though one would probably slip out later that night as they snuggled and drifted off to sleep. By the mild irritation and the determined open affection Paula guessed it had to do with her father expressing his opinions about her relationship with another woman, most likely at volume and with demanding words. Conservative views had no place here. Right now there was greasy and fried goodness, slathered in ranch dressing, and between that and the painkillers it was enough to get her in a more relaxed frame of mind.

"Have you spoken with him yet?" Paula asked, chuckling as she watched her lover tuck in with a vengeance. One of the few times Alais allowed herself to indulge: getting back from a visit home.

Alais shook her head. "I'll call him when we get to the house, make sure he knows the schedule for the next few weeks and let him know that I've arrived safe." Teeth closed down on and tore at an onion ring, ranch dressing cooling her mouth where the hot food singed delicate flesh. Her carefully applied makeup was no match for the grease stains, but it didn't matter right now.

Paula thought it was adorable, really. And said so, with just the look on her face and the chuckle behind her hand. Alais blushed a little, and grinned.

"Why, did you have plans for tonight?"

The larger woman leaned forward, hands folded wrist over wrist, fingers tracing down the length of Alais's index finger. "As a matter of fact, I did. I was thinking we would have dinner in. There's a bottle of blush cooling its heels waiting for us..."

Alais ducked her head and smiled, rubbing her thumb over grease-stained lips. "You spoil me."

"Not nearly enough, by the look of you. What do you say we get you fed and then home, and you can nap for a little while?"

While she cooked them up a meal that Alais really would say would spoil her. It wouldn't be the first time, either, and she certainly hoped it wouldn't be the last. Alais curled her slender fingers around hers, smiling.

"I'd say... I like the sound of that. A lot."

Alais called Martine from the road as they headed home, both because Paula reminded her and because there was always that nagging feeling that he would get into trouble if she didn't check on him every so often. In any other relationship it would have been a sign of overprotectiveness, or jealousy. In theirs, it was somewhat different.

After four rings, his voice-mail clicked on. "This is Martine, leave a message."

She leaned back in the seat as Paula drove. Either he was screening his calls or he was working; he didn't leave his home very often without one or both of the ladies, and it was still school hours, which meant that he was on his own for the moment. "Love, I've landed safe and I'm headed home." And in this case he would know that 'home' meant 'Paula's,' as per their schedule. "I'll see you before I take off again, but..."

There was a click on the other end of the line; so he _was_ screening his calls, then. She wondered briefly why, decided not to ask. "Alais..." He sounded relieved. Had it been that bad of a day?

"Hello, love."

Paula's eyes flickered over to her at the warmth in her voice, then back to the road.

"Bad day?"

She heard fabric rustling against the phone. "I've had worse." Which meant it had been bad, and he didn't want to talk about it. Yes, she could speak fluent boyfriend, however much she might dislike the need. "How was your flight?"

"Uneventful. Long and uneventful, same as always. Paula and I just had lunch, we were heading home..." And Paula was gesturing to her. It took Alais a moment to sort out what the gesture meant. "Do... you want us to stop and pick you up anything?"

There was just enough of a pause to make her worry a bit. Perhaps she should call Joss later. "No, thanks. Just go home, relax, say hello to Paula for me. I'll be all right, Joss'll come over after class."

Alais tried to remember what day it was here, and when Joss's classes let out for the day. Not soon enough for her to stop worrying, but probably soon enough for safety's sake. Martine didn't go out of the house, and there was only so much trouble he could get into inside of it. "All right. I'll call you tonight just to make sure she's over there, ça va? Okay?"

Martine snorted. "All right. We'll be fine, Alais."

"Just to make sure. You've got your medications, your Ativan, your Oxycontin... you've taken your morning dose?"

"Yes, mother."

Alais wrinkled her nose. "That's disgusting. All right, love. I'll be home, most likely, for most of the weekend, and if not there I'll have my cell phone on me so if you need anything, day or night, you call me and let me know, all right?"

She thought she could hear him rolling his eyes. At the very least she did catch the soft chuckle most commonly heard before a dismissive remark. "I'll call." And there it was. "We'll be fine, darling. Trust me. And," he added. "If you don't trust me, trust Joss?" Adding that to the end, though, meant he'd heard her. Enough to know that she would hear him smiling and nodding in his voice and be concerned and, probably, exasperated.

Even so. "I trust her, love, but she's still a very young woman. And I want you to be safe. You know we can't really afford to take risks, with..."

"Alais."

There was a line there. And she'd crossed it at some point when she hadn't been looking, while she'd been irritated with him. Her lips pressed together, thin and worried, and she nodded, before taking in a big breath and let it out again in a long sigh. "All right. I'm sorry. I just..."

"Worry. I know. It'll be all right."

She wished she had his confidence. Alais made another apology, told him she loved him, and hung up. Paula was still giving her sidelong glances for several minutes after the phone call and she leaned back and closed her eyes rather than answer the question in her gaze. If she spoke up again now she would snap her lover's head off, and she didn't want that. It was only irritation and having been too long dealing with people without rest that made her so cranky and judgmental. Long flights did sometimes do that to her, especially when she was flying from home.

It was her father, really. Her father could work her up into the worst kind of mood, and then a full day of work after that. No chance to recover her composure or dignity, and dealing with customers and passengers who might afford her little of either, especially dignity. No wonder she was snappish.

As they passed through the last cluster of stores and into the neighborhood where Paula lived Alais felt her shoulders unknot again, at least a little. Paula hadn't pressed for any kind of explanation or tried to cheer her up. The silence spread out between them and made things comfortable and easy where she could choose to speak, or not, whichever she felt like.

By the time they got home she had forgotten most of what had been bothering her, and the nap and dinner subsequent quickly eliminated the rest.

He hadn't told her. Of course he hadn't told her, Martine, don't be stupid. There was nothing to tell her, nothing to worry about.

Martine hung up the phone and shook a couple pills from the oversized bottle into his palm, tossed them back and crunched them until they went down with a small scrape and a jagged aftertaste. Powder crunching between his teeth and resting on his tongue till he swiped it through his mouth and swished a bit.

It wouldn't help. Or at least, it wouldn't help as much as the prescription painkillers, but both Alais and Joss had impressed upon him that those were to be used as a last resort, and they would keep him well-stocked in industrial-sized bottles of aspirin. He was not to touch the stronger stuff until it became absolutely necessary for him to function, right before the trip to the hospital. Partly, Alais said, because she didn't want to see him become dependent on the prescription drugs he was taking, let alone anything stronger. Partly because it bothered him every time Joss picked up his prescriptions. The look in her eyes when she handed him the bag, wordless and frowning, as though he were in the hospital already.

He knew where that look came from, too. She had seen more than enough of him hooked up to machines and tubes and tucked away in dark corners because the light hurt his eyes so badly he couldn't stop twitching. He didn't want to remind her of that. If living with a dull ache on a warehouse store sized bottle of aspirin was the price, it was a small price to pay. Plus the added benefit of avoiding the strange feelings the prescription drugs gave him, which he suspected worried her just as much. He knew they worried him. The floating head feeling, the sensation that he was a character in a Pink Floyd music video or a loony tune. Everything felt distant on those drugs, and he hated that. Especially how he felt around the girls when he was like that. How they looked at him. But nothing else shut the pain down completely.

Three years, two general practitioners, and a handful of specialists hadn't been able to figure out what caused the headaches that blinded him and kept him immobile and isolated in the room. They presented like migraines but none of the usual migraine medications seemed to work on him; nothing seemed to work on him. The best treatments they had found were narcotics, opiates, drugs which dulled the senses in a broad wave rather than targeting the specific problems presented to most migraine sufferers. It should, he suspected, bother him more than it actually did. It certainly bothered his doctors.

If he knew what had brought him to this state he might have been able to offer a better suggestion to the doctors as to what "this state" might be, or be more engaged in a dialogue on how to fix it. But he didn't. He had no idea what had happened in his life before six years ago.

Five years ago he had just started to put a life together, even if it wasn't the one he'd had, when he met the young flight attendant staying over in a hotel between trips. She had been beautiful, engaging without getting too personal, and he had fallen for her inside half a minute. Somehow, she learned to put up with him. Somehow, he and his quirks hadn't driven her away.

"God knows how that happened," he murmured, smiling, turning the empty water cup over and over again in his hands until he finally creaked up out of his chair to refill it. He'd refill the pitcher while he was up, too. It was down to a thin layer of half-ice at the bottom.

Alais preferred the bottled water over everything, possibly because it was what she had grown used to after years and years of airplanes and airports. But Joss insisted that it was cheaper and easier to have a filter pitcher, and with as much water as he needed to drink (or so it seemed) that was something he should invest in. The two women were so different, not quite as stereotypical as night and day but certainly something like sugar and spice. And yet they got along. That was the second great miracle of his life.

The third great miracle was that they shared the caring of him, without apparent jealousy or possessive rancor, and he was always grateful for that. Often at the strangest times.

He reached up and got a second cup, poured water, at the knock on the door. That would be Joss coming back from school. The knock was for form's sake, and to let him know she was coming in and he could close the door to the bedroom if he was working. She had had a key for some time now.

"I brought sushi?"

The lights were dimmed all through the apartment, making the small entry hallway a deeply-colored sliver and the shadows from the sparse furniture even deeper. If any of them were the sort to stuff a house full of shelves and surfaces, they didn't bring it here. On a practical level, fewer pieces of furniture meant fewer corners and edges for Martine to bang into. Less than that, Alais wasn't there often enough and Joss tended to curl up in one place and slowly spread her books and papers around her in an expanding radius. They had an entryway table to put keys on, a coffee table to put their food and drinks on, a television to put the news on, and a couch to put themselves on. Martine had his workspace nook, but that was about it.

Sitting cross-legged in front of the coffee table was the only alternative to sprawling on the couch. Joss took one end, leaning her left shoulder against the couch as she poked at her dinner with her chopsticks, and he took the other. Not quite a carpet picnic; Martine was more fussy about that sort of thing than she was. But they could sit on either side of the coffee table and share sushi.

He rapped her chopsticks when she went to steal a piece of unagi, though. "That's my sushi, thank you very much."

"But I like eel!" Joss didn't raise her voice so much as make a face at him, something between a frown and a pout. He laughed. She could look fierce when she wanted to, but when she didn't bother to put feeling behind it she looked rather like a child's animated role model.

Right now, he knew she didn't want to. He even knew why. She had been making careful hints and asking subtle questions about his diet, but if he didn't at least look like he was trying to eat more regularly or even remember to eat at all he knew she would turn from subtle to downright anvilicious. He did try to remember. He had never been very bulky or fed-looking, and she knew that. He knew she knew that, she sometimes complained that he'd lucked out in the metabolism sweepstakes. But she worried, especially when she did the grocery shopping and the food didn't disappear as fast as she thought it should, nor was there an abundance of takeout containers in the trash.

Alais, somehow, hadn't noticed. Or didn't mind as much. Perhaps because she wasn't there in the day-to-day it was harder for her to judge what and how much was being eaten.

Her chopsticks rapped against the back of his hand. "Hey. Sunshine." She smiled when he looked up, too. "You going to eat the rest of that?"

Martine made a face at her, pulled the small tray of spicy eel rolls towards him. "Mine!" She laughed, as he'd hoped she would.

"So, how was school?"

It was a lame topic change. But she liked her classes, and if he could get her to talk about that perhaps she wouldn't notice that he'd only eaten most of his eel and two pieces of his other roll, not something she considered a suitable dinner. And she was right that it wasn't, not for someone his size, but he didn't feel up to arguing right now.

Joss shrugged. "School was school. Nothing special. Although..." she swallowed the rest of her roll before pointing her chopsticks at him. "Remind me to go to the library this weekend. I need to hit the books for a paper on the Enlightenment for Comparative Religions."

His lips twitched. "And by _hit the books for a paper_ you mean do the reading and then put it off for the next three weeks until it's the night before and you're sitting up mainlining caffeine and typing frantically on my computer?"

"Would..." she put another piece of ginger on her next bite and pointed her chopsticks at him again. "Since when have I ever done that? Ever?"

"Last term," he knocked her chopsticks down with his. "Statistics and Data Collection."

Joss made a face. "I hate statistics."

He chuckled. The truth was somewhere between their two positions, but it was more fun to argue. To drag it back and forth between the two of them till it was ragged and comfortable and they could put the issue to bed.

"If you'd just do the things you hate before the things you enjoy, it'd go a lot faster..."

"If you'd stop arguing with me about it it'd go even faster." She smiled to show she wasn't really upset, and he laughed. "I'll get it done, you know I always do."

He nodded, then glanced over her shoulder at the television, which was down to barely audible levels and now displaying pictures of what claimed to be Afghanistan. Nothing he wanted to see, but he stayed long enough to read the scroll at the bottom before dropping his eyes back to his plate again.

"What are you..." Joss looked over her shoulder. Then she reached for the remote and clicked it off. "Don't watch that crap. Especially not if you're in a mood."

"I am not..."

"You are. You had one of your headaches before I got here again, didn't you."

It was a fair question, but also something of a pointless one. He had a headache most days, now. He just didn't tell her about all of them because they weren't bad enough to mention. "It's gone away by now."

"Hmph." She was quiet for a moment or three, longer than he had expected for her not to say anything about painkillers or doctors or anything like that. "What does Alais think?"

Chopsticks on the plate, while she shuffled what was left of her food back and forth. Only a few grains of rice and a scrap of seaweed remained on hers, bits and pieces of fish and tempura. He had four pieces of California roll left. She grabbed one and dipped it in the soy sauce, also afloat with several grains of rice and detritus from their feast, but she didn't say anything. Neither did he.

"Alais... thinks I should go back to keeping a log, try a different specialist." Not that it would help when he kept arguing with them about courses of treatment. "Maybe someone more open to, um. Alternative approaches. Homeopathic medicine. Less drugs... fewer drugs, more acupuncture or something." He didn't think it would be more effective, but Alais seemed to think he'd follow his treatment more closely if it didn't involve mind-altering substances. She might be right. He still clung to a healthy paranoia about anything that fuddled his mind that much.

Joss grunted something that could have been derision or praise for the other woman's sensibility, he couldn't tell. "It's not a bad plan. It takes longer than..." She lapsed into silence, and as the minutes clicked by on the old clock he reached out and took her hand. "If that's what the doctors want you to do..." Joss gave him a look that suggested he should have done it a long time ago, but she didn't say anything.

"This is the way I am. There isn't much either of us can do about it."

Of all of his difficulties for her to have a problem with, the headaches were the least likely of them. It could have been the amnesia, or the prospect of polygamy that troubled her. She nodded, still not saying anything, and he pulled her gently to him with one slender hand, stronger than her by far despite his scrawny frame. Her skin felt soft, warm. There were times when he felt he was as cold and as hard as a mannequin of metal and wire, though neither of the ladies had ever complained about it.

"I know," Joss said, after she'd pulled up first one knee and then both and then she was sitting on the couch, settling into the crook of his arm. Her fingers curled into his shirt as she pressed her knuckles to his chest. "I know, but that doesn't mean I like it. They're getting worse, and they're getting... debilitating. And it could mean anything, and most of the things that come with mind-shearing headaches aren't good, and..."

"... and it could be nothing. It could be a quirk of brain chemistry." His arm tightened around her shoulders, and he kissed her forehead.

She poked him in the chest with a fingertip anyway. "Brain chemistry my ass. You're just a stubborn _cabron, que no_ ..."

If he let her go on she could have ranted for several minutes. So he didn't.

Eventually they came up for air, with him stretched out over of her and his hand on her hips, body pressing her into the couch. Her eyes were wide and dark under the tangled mass of their dark and darker hair, and she licked her lips as she slid her gaze to the bedroom door. He nodded.

"You're still a bastard," she murmured, as they passed through the doorway.

I called Martine. He'll come. He'll pick me up and we'll go somewhere safe and it'll be all right.

My reflection stares back at me. It looks washed out, tinted and pale. I look sick. I don't look like myself, my self is tanned and badass. At least, I like to think so. Tanned, anyway, people with my heritage were not meant to be pasty. My eyes are supposed to be brown. My reflection has bloodshot black eyes, cracked lips, and hair that goes limp and tangled over the shoulders. I look like hell. I look like a victim. It's not surprising, it's not like the label doesn't apply. But it doesn't make me feel any better. There's that saying, we're all naked under our clothes. Looking in the mirror now, I feel it.

My eyes start burning. I close them so I don't start crying; I can feel the tears backing up behind my eyelids, filling every space. My head lowers until my hair brushes over my cheeks, which isn't something I think about until one side is shredded and the strands of hair are catching in the bits of wet flesh. It's a weird sensation. My head jerks up and I brush the strands away. Hair could get into the wound and infect it, somehow. So could tears. I brush them away, because I'm not crying, honest. If I start crying now I won't stop. My nerves are shot to shit.

He'll be here soon. I just have to hold it together until then.

I splash the cold water over my face and wrap the shawl around my head again. I tuck the tissues from my purse, not the rough and dirty bathroom paper towels, against my cheek. He'll be meeting me outside. I should go outside.

Dirty looks follow me down the side of the bar as I walk. Some of them double as leers, the kind of grin that wants to know what I have on under my coat. I want to smash their glasses into their stupid, smirking faces, see how they like it.

"Why don't you take off that towel on your head, there, babe? Show us what you're hiding under there?"

"Maybe she's got a bomb in her backpack."

Fucking racist pigs.

One of them reaches out to grab it, I can hear his jacket moving and his heavy boots. I sidestep and walk a little faster. On campus I would have turned around so hard it would swing into his hand and smack my textbooks against his wrist. But I don't have textbooks, and I'm just not feeling it tonight. So I say a few words my mother would gasp at and keep going.

"What was that, bitch? You talking raghead at me?"

Almost at the door. Dumbass can't tell the difference between Spanish and Arabic. Can I afford it?

Sure, I can.

Martine remembered in the instant between realizing he was awake and opening his eyes, and then he forgot what he had remembered as his eyes strained to make coherent shapes out of the shadows. Beside and behind him, Joss shifted from being propped against his back to thumping gently into the pillows, but didn't wake.

His heart was still pounding, but more than that, his body still remembered the fear and weeping from his dream. His limbs felt weak, though of course there had been no running, no hiding from the soldiers. His eyes felt pricked and hot, his cheeks felt raw.

 _pressed against the stone wall hiding from the soldiers mommy please no please don't let them hurt me curl up tight little ball pretend they can't see you if I can't see the bad thing coming it can't get me momma please no_

It felt real enough that it could have been a memory. Or it could have been a nightmare. Legacy of the television news programs, something his mind came up with based on news reports or horror movie commercials. Hell. He didn't know, and if he was going to be awake for a while as his shivering indicated, he'd better not wake up Joss. Slipping out of bed was the easy part. Figuring out what he was going to do to try and get back to sleep was harder.

He took a moment to look back over his shoulder as he found something warm to bundle around himself. She had kicked off most of the covers as per usual and lay stretched out, uniformly tanned skin and toned body beautiful in the specks of moonlight that flickered between the blinds. It was a sight he could have stood to watch for a while. Perhaps it would have made him easier in his mind, but standing there watching was a good way to wake her up, too. And then she would be cross with him. He knew that from experience.

So he slipped out the door and closed it most of the way behind him. Enough to muffle any sounds he might make, not enough to wake her open with the 'click.'

 _click goes the weapon and click again and little explosions in the walls and in the people little blossoms of red poppies over the field for all the young men and women falling like reeds before the scythe too soon too soon tears flowing down his face momma I'm not supposed to die like this momma help me help_

His head was pounding. Again, of course. Maybe still. His mouth felt dry and full of cotton, little sticky papery spots making his tongue stick to the roof or sides of his mouth, his lips staying stuck in an upward peel look, a thin film of some kind of crusty substance coating his lips. Sleeping with one's mouth open was never the wisest course of action to begin with, but when gasping and panting for breath at the same time, well. Sourly, he revisited and again discarded the idea of sleeping pills.

His side of the bed had had damp spots along the length of his body where the sweat had pooled. Now that he was up and about the dampness was fading, if not the scent. A shower in the middle of the night wasn't the best plan, it would wake him up, not put him back to sleep. Water, though. Water was called for.

It might even help the headache.

The refrigerator light stabbed through his eyeballs when he grabbed the pitcher; he shut it as quickly as possible and everything in the side door shelves clanked in irritating and loud defiance. And it wasn't until he had reached for the glasses that he realized the water would be ice cold, too. That was a chunk of ice that had solidified in the pitcher and was now clacking against the sides.

"Body shock," he muttered. "Lovely."

He reached for the glasses, drew his hand back, grabbed one of Joss's cheap party plastic cups that she kept coming home with. If he was going to be debilitated, the last thing they all needed was broken glass on the floor.

More water. On his third half-glass he started to slow down, eyes widening when he realized how much he had had in a single sitting. Excessive thirst was supposed to be a symptom of diabetes, but he had never displayed any of the other signs. Not when he barely ate, didn't get exhausted except for the pain, nothing else. He glanced up at the clock. Had he taken his evening dose?

A look in his pill box said no, he hadn't. Well, that did explain that, somewhat. He took the box, water, over to the couch and sat down. The cushions were soft against his skin.

 _skin peeling back away from the blisters and cuts till it's all curled up and piecing off and drying out to crackle and blow away in the wind_

He leaned back and closed his eyes and tried to be very still. Cool air, couch cushions slowly warming under his body, the juxtaposition of both somehow working to soothe his very frayed nerves. He didn't realize the pounding in his head was easing until he had almost fallen asleep. Which was best done not on the couch. And certainly not with his body at this angle unless he wanted to wake up with a stiff neck. "Come on. Off the couch."

It didn't work until he almost fell asleep and his neck did start to ache. Off the couch it was, then, and back to the bed. Joss was now turned away from the door and curled up around one knee, exposing the line of her back. He couldn't resist trailing his fingertips down her spine as he crawled back into bed.

" _Cabron,_ " she muttered, not moving.

Martine chuckled as he slid under the covers and curled up, suddenly cold instead of pleasantly cool. He had managed to achieve some state between sleeping and wakefulness where he wasn't tired, but couldn't stay awake either. There was something that had happened in his dreams, something he had remembered or figured out, but now he couldn't put into words what it was. Something missing, hollowed out inside or lamed or scooped out of him that he needed to put back in its place again, and the dreams had been a key to that. And now he couldn't remember what had happened.

He lay back and made himself very still, fingers relaxed and slightly curled under the covers, back inhumanly straight. The curved muscles along his shoulderblades ached, as though he'd been carrying a heavy load. Perhaps if he could go back to sleep again he could dream it again, and remember it upon waking. Maybe.

Maybe not.

Alais lay in a panting, sweaty, well-satisfied heap on the bed; Paula collapsed next to her after a second. "Now that was a welcome home," Alais grinned over at the other woman. Then she reached over to slide her fingers through the tangled blonde strands of her lover's hair when she didn't say anything. "Hey. I didn't wear you out, did I?"

"Mm-mm." Paula still had her eyes closed, but a smile crept over her lips that matched Alais's smug satisfaction. "I'm good."

"Good," Alais snuggled in closer, the hand that had been in Paula's hair now creeping across her waist. "Although being able to wear you out would be quite the compliment to my sexual skills..."

Paula laughed, twisting in the bed to wrap the smaller woman in her arms and hold her close. "Do you really need spoken compliments to your sexual skills? I kind of thought," her voice dropped to a low murmur. "All that noise a few minutes ago would have told you how good you are anyway."

"Mm, maybe it did," Alais nuzzled behind her lover's ear and proceeded to kiss her way down to her collarbone. "Maybe I just like to hear the words spoken aloud."

"You are the light of my life, _cherie Alais_. You are the love in my heart."

Which was not a sexual compliment, but it achieved the desired effect nonetheless, and very thoroughly, too. They curled deeper into the bed together, with Alais drawing up the sheet after a moment while attempting to kick down the blankets. And after a second or two of that, Paula chuckled and reached down to grab them and throw them to the end of the bed.

"You know it's supposed to get down to below freezing tonight, right?"

"I know," Alais didn't open her eyes. "You're warm, and I'm comfortable."

"Just making sure."

There were things they meant to talk about. Paula had asked after Alais's flight and gotten the tirade that usually resulted from her visits home and dealings with her father, and she meant to address the issue of his constant harping on her about children and when she was going to settle down with some nice young man. Snide comments about her choice of lovers led to outright denouncements of her lifestyle and it turned out that she had spent the last night at a friend's.

And Alais had mentioned something about meaning to talk to Paula about her problems at church. Neither of them could come up with much of anything to say right now, though. Alais's fingers trailed up and down along her arm, barely brushing over skin.

The hell with what her father said; this was right. She was comfortable here in ways that she never had been anywhere else, whether here meant in Paula's bed or in Martine's. Among people who knew her for who she was, and loved her. Paula's arms and voice surrounded her and she was at peace.

"What was that?" Paula murmured, her slurred voice making it clear that she was drifting. Alais blinked, realizing that she had drifted too. Had she said something?

"Nothing." Anyway, it couldn't have been much of anything if she didn't remember saying something. She yawned, shifted against her beloved and settled in for the night.

Paula reached over to turn off the lamp, drifting off to sleep shortly after.

Joss was on her way out the door when Martine came trotting up behind her, keys jingling. She turned and blinked up at him. "Where are you going?"

"I thought I'd drive you."

She gave him a look for that, and he gave her a slow blink of someone who has no idea what you're talking about, really. All right, if he was going to play ignorant, she wasn't going to ask what was behind the sudden display of clinginess. It was useless to argue with him when he was like this. Despite knowing that he hadn't gotten any good sleep last night and against her better judgment, she shrugged. "All right, come on, then." At least the college wasn't too far.

And she was relieved to notice that he took it slow. Took the smaller roads so that he didn't have to go too fast, didn't break or even bend the speed limit. Unusually restrained. She looked at him sideways. "You sure you're feeling all right?"

He didn't look back at her, keeping his eyes on the road. "I'm fine, Joss." He didn't sound entirely fine, not with his voice so measured and even, but it sounded more like an emotional stress than another headache, or something else. "I just thought I'd drive you to school today. It's cold out, and it might snow..."

It hadn't been snowing when they'd left. She frowned, trying to remember what had happened the night before. All she remembered was being woken up by him in the middle of the night, by something he'd done, rolling over as he came back to bed and going back to sleep. More nightmares?

If she asked, he would just shut her out again. There were times when he was in a mood to talk about what was bothering him, and times when he wanted to talk but didn't have the words. Both of those were more common than this quiet wall of stoicism. Joss had no idea where this had come from. His hands weren't clutching the steering wheel, his posture wasn't stiff and he wasn't holding his head on his neck like he was in pain.

His eyes were slightly more sunken than usual, bruised around them. From lack of sleep, she knew, but maybe also from something else? It was impossible to say when he wasn't talking to her.

She turned her shoulders and stared out the window the rest of the way there, leaning her forehead on the glass. If he wasn't talking to her, she didn't have to talk to him, either. That was the way it worked.

He pulled up in front of the gate, double-parked. She should get out of the car; she should do a lot of things, most of them with the goal of getting to class on time. But she stayed sitting there with her forehead against the window and he didn't say anything, and she didn't do anything. Mutual standoff. She was waiting for him to make some sort of gesture of conciliation, a touch, open his mouth and speak a word, something. She didn't know what he was waiting for. Maybe he didn't, either.

Whatever it was, he didn't say anything. Just sat there.

Joss opened the car door with more force than she needed, snatching her backpack and swearing when it got caught on the seat lever. Martine leaned over the gap between the seats, quicker than she could follow or maybe she just hadn't been paying attention. Unhooked her backpack and then got out on his side of the car. She stopped there, waiting for him to come around.

"Joss..." His voice sounded more hoarse than it should have after a stony-silent car ride. No, he wasn't well, and she didn't know what was going on with him right now. She hated that. It never meant anything good.

She curled her fingers around his anyway. "I don't know what's going on with you, okay? But I want you to be safe. So you tell me if anything bad's going on, okay?"

He nodded. Smiled slightly. "So does that mean you're not mad at me?"

"If I find out you been keeping things from me, I'm going to be pissed," she poked a finger into his chest, and he actually laughed a little. "But, no, I'm not mad. Just worried."

"Okay, then," and he kissed her good-bye.

Martine could never do anything by half measures. A kiss good-bye from him meant both arms around her and pulling her close against that too-thin, broad chest. Kissing her until her face felt flushed and she wondered if she was still decent for class or if she looked like some girl in a perfume commercial, windblown and faintly plumped with sex. He smiled at her as he let her go and backed up to the car, getting in and driving off. Bastard knew what kind of effect he had on her and, when he was all right, he enjoyed it.

"Well, he's a handsome one, isn't he."

"Shut up, Rose." Joss turned, shouldered her bag and walked with her friend to class. Of course the other woman had been watching and waiting. She just couldn't get away with having Martine drop her off and not be seen. Especially not when he was in the mood to make a display like that.

"All flowy dark hair and pale gothiness. Cheekbones you could cut steak with..."

"Shut _up_ , Rose." Joss laughed.

Rose didn't stop until they got to their first class, and not even then. Joss got a little bit of a respite during Comparative Religions, which she did not share with the other girl. They were doing Biblical interpretations, a whirlwind tour through the ages, and while she appreciated what the class was trying to do, she didn't think two weeks was sufficient time to cover everything.

Especially not when people insisted on asking inane questions. "They weren't thinking about the rights of women or black people back then," Joss raised her voice without raising her eyes to the board. "Most of them were busy trying to scratch out a living, everyone did what they had to do. They didn't have time."

Whoever it was, Laura someone, kept nattering on about how they were deliberately oppressing the vagina-empowered portion of the population in order to reassure themselves of their masculinity, while the teacher kept trying to drag them back to the schisms in the church. When she got home, Joss realized, she would make Martine put on that one DVD with the bit about Martin Luther. That was always funny.

By the end of class she had reached the point where there were more doodles in the margins of her notes than there were notes. Superheroes, mostly, awkward figures with toes that disappeared down into lines and capes that blurred into wings. Creatures of what was supposed to be ethereal beauty, but between the notebook lines and her eraser smudges barely made it to humanoid. Oh well.

She smiled slightly at the professor as she slipped out the door at the end of that class and wondered why she had bothered.

"Whoa, who peed in your cornflakes, hmm?"

Rob plopped first his tray, then himself down next to her at her quiet table in a corner of the cafeteria. No longer quiet, but she didn't mind his brand of noise, which ran more to camp and the ridiculous than anything else.

"Nothing. Comparative Religions, again."

"Ahhh..." He nodded, the kind of expansive would-be wise old sage nod that made him look like a bobblehead. "You should really consider taking over that class, you know, instead of staying quiet all the time. You could do some good for their sad little minds."

Joss chuckled. "You mean, if I wasn't too busy bashing their heads against the desk."

"That too." He opened his eyes wide as he munched on a celery stick, then pointed the stick at her. "It's educational! It's corrective percussion maintenance. Reverse phrenology."

She had to take a moment to work out what phrenology even was. "Reading their futures by putting the bumps in their heads?"

"Those who do not learn from their history are doomed to be beaten in the face by it."

Which was when the orange juice went simultaneously up her nose, down her throat, and back into her mouth. Something to do with the explosive coughing and laughing fit. She glared at him as she mopped her face up. "You did that on purpose."

"Maybe a little bit. An eensy weensy teensy bit. Seriously, Joss, what's got your panties all in a bundle? Did that handsome guy you call a roommate keep you up all night?"

Eyebrow waggling. There was actual eyebrow waggling. She rolled her eyes. "Did Rose tell ... she did tell you, didn't she."

"In glorious detail. When are you going to bring him by?"

"When you bring me that snowball from hell." Her grabbing her tray, though, had less to do with his bad jokes and attempting to hit on Martine by proxy and more to do with the fact that she had to shuttle her butt across campus for the so-called 'lab' in fifteen minutes. "Then we'll talk."

"Promises, promises!" Rob called after her. She just laughed. He wasn't Martine's type, anyway. Closet heterosexual and all.

Martine still wasn't sure what had happened but he was feeling better about how it turned out when he got back to the apartment. Joss wasn't going anywhere, she was just upset with him for reasons he couldn't figure out, and maybe she would forget all about it when she got home anyway. He sat down, then swore and stood up again, glancing over at the kitchen. She definitely wouldn't forget about it if he didn't eat anything all day.

He looked around the room, trying to figure out if it was worth it to pretend he'd been eating something or just to have some breakfast and argue with her later. Breakfast was the more likely thing to do, since she did have a point most of the time about eating. He just wasn't hungry, couldn't muster up the appetite, and trying to force himself to eat usually made him sick.

Toast was the easiest to swallow, and would taste least bad if it had to come back up. He made a couple of slices and put on a pot of water for tea, spread some butter over the toast at least to give some kind of variety to his diet. Dairy was supposed to be good for you. Martine rubbed his eyes, wondering at what point he should start worrying about eating what was good for him and stop worrying about eating at all, and could Joss tell him that? He wouldn't ask her, though.

"You're a damned fool, Martine," he told himself.

The cell phone on the kitchen counter buzzed insistently at him. He picked it up, clicked through till he found the 'HELP ME' message from Joss, smiled. "Are you killing people again?" he murmured as he texted back. _No, you can't kill them. I don't have your bail money ready._ It wouldn't be the first time her classmates had gotten on her nerves.

That was how she'd first gotten his attention. Bullied him into loving her, without her meaning to. Her sharp mind and sharper, if somewhat runaway, wit. And the fact that she was willing to tame that wit and settle down in his presence told him how much she loved him. She had the intelligence to use her acerbic sense of humor judiciously and to put it away as needed, even if she didn't have so much patience for those somewhat less intelligent than herself. Average intelligence, he supposed. "Maybe I'm lucky _I_ meet _your_ standards," he smiled.

Toast was ready. He pulled out the plate and cup, poured himself some tea, wolfed down the toast before he went over to the computer and put on his headphones, logging in for the day. It wasn't the most glamorous thing in the world, but it paid for the apartment and all the luxuries, with money to spare. And it meant he didn't have to go into an office and make nice with all the other people he could never quite figure out how to talk to.

"Thank you for calling AeroCorps Tech Support, how may I assist you today?"

It was easy if he just turned off the part of his brain that actually gave a fuck about anything and left on only the parts that were relevant to problem solving. People came to them with the stupidest problems.

But it was a paycheck. A man without a past, without a history, without the kind of documentation that would pass even the barest scan, couldn't afford to turn down a paycheck, especially not one that paid as well as his did. He'd quickly become one of their most valuable employees, because he didn't make a fuss and because he was willing to cover shifts at insane hours of the day and night. Chalk it up to an awkward and increasingly erratic sleep schedule.

"Happy to help ma'am thank you for calling..."

Drone. On and on. Eventually it gave him a headache and he had to drop out for a bit, but this one didn't last too long. Stress induced more than anything. He looked over at the clock, but it was still several hours till Joss would be home and several hours more of this inane drivel.

Martine sighed.

"Thank you for calling..."

Alais reveled in the ability to ignore the alarm clock that morning. There was one, because Paula had to report in for a couple of hours to cover an unexpected absence, since the site couldn't be left unattended. This, despite having taken the day off when she knew Alais's schedule, but Alais was able to roll over and go back to sleep, a fact which she deeply appreciated.

When she did finally crawl out of bed it was with a big yawn and mostly because she had to pee and there was a stale taste in her mouth. She made use of the necessary, then the shower, feeling somewhat more human when she was out and at least dressed in a silk wrap, at which point Paula came home.

"What is this vision of loveliness before me?" she smiled, and held out her arms for Alais to run into, beaming back. For a little while the smaller woman just burrowed into her and they snuggled there in the sunlit foyer, enjoying the morning.

"All done?" Alais chirped, eventually wriggling away and padding towards the kitchen on the balls of her bare feet.

"All done," Paula nodded. "It was mostly paperwork, anyway, the sort of thing we could hire someone else to do if we had the budget for it."

"Well, good." Alais said, and then seemed to realize more of what Paula had said, the entire context of it. "Obviously not good that you can't hire the personnel you need, but good that you're done. Weekends should be personal time, not work time. Mm!" That last bit was for her licking the spatula. "And I put the madeleines in."

"So I see. And smell."

They sat down to brunch at the couch, Alais bringing out the basket of madeleines and Paula bringing out the pitcher of milk and glasses. It would have been a formal breakfast except that days off, for them, together, didn't happen so often that she wanted to squander it on sitting across a table from Paula. Curled up against her lover's ample bosom it was. And Paula happy to be curled up against, and fed.

"Did you want to call him," she offered, when they'd finished off the pastries and most of the millk. "Check in, and stuff?"

Alais blinked her eyes open again. She'd forgotten that she'd meant to check on him, although she couldn't think how. He always needed checking in on. And when had she started drifting off, anyway? "Yes, I think I'd better," she said, sitting up with a reluctant groan. "Just to be sure. And check in at work." Because every now and again, they did need her on her time off. She hoped today wouldn't be one of those times.

And it wasn't. To her relief, the automated system answered her call with the same old boring message, and no 'need to report in' queries.

Martine, however, was home and off of the phones, at least for the moment. "Hello?"

Alais frowned. "You sound ..." Like hell was what she wanted to say, but it wasn't helpful. "Exhausted. Are you all right?" Which, for them, was more of a question of whether or not he was having one of his headaches than anything.

"I'm all right," he said, strain in his voice, but that was Martine-speak for his lack of inclination to go to the hospital, and Alais was on the verge of telling him she was going to call Joss and have her go home and take care of him. "It's just been a long day on the phones, is all."

Oh. Well, work stress could do that, dealing with those idiots on the phone all day and the occasional person who genuinely did have a problem that was endlessly frustrating and no amount of trouble-shooting could manage it. If that was all, no, there was no need for Joss to come home, and nothing either of them could do anyway. Alais let herself come down from high alert, adrenaline easing back.

"Well, make yourself a good strong cup of tea and soldier through. And then have a nap when you're done. Don't let Joss keep you up," She made sure he could hear the finger-waggling through the phone. It would amuse him.

"I'll try," he chuckled a little, as though it pained his head to do so. "How are you? How is your holiday?"

She tried not to keep him on the phone too long, at least, mindful of his break times. A few more minutes and she told him she loved him and set the phone down, much relieved, to Paula's quizzical look. "Work," she explained. "Is apparently bothering him. He's a better man than I am. A more _patient_ man than I am," she wrinkled her nose, and Paula laughed.

"I'd say he is," she teased lightly, coming in closer and sliding an arm around the other woman's waist. "But now that the question of what Martine needs is settled, I have a more pressing question. What does Alais need?"

The smaller woman smiled, tilting her head up a bit and looping her arms around Paula's neck. "I would say Alais needs some quiet time at home alone with her paramour," she murmured. Her accent thickened just a bit to where it was audible rather than subsumed under her perfectly enunciated English. "If the lovely lady is amenable."

"I think that's exactly the word," Paula grinned, right before sweeping Alais into a deep and lingering kiss. The silk robe, as per custom, fell to the floor shortly thereafter.

And shortly after that, so did they.

However all right Martine sounded, Alais stopped by before she had to leave again for Paris. He was wearing the soft cotton robe that she had bought for him, and Joss was out at a late night lecture. She smiled at him as she slipped inside under his arm.

"How are you feeling?" The question slipped out in a tone that suggested she wanted to get the usual discussion over with as soon as possible. Her smile curved her mouth into a sensuous expression of wet-lipped anticipation and she slid her hands up along his arms under the sleeves of the robe.

He stepped back, apprehensive but smiling back. This was, after all, the first time they had really seen each other in a couple of weeks. Not surprising. Just a lot to take in at the end of a work day. "I'm fine." Which meant that he hadn't had any headaches. Nothing debilitating. No exhaustion.

"Eating and drinking properly? Have you taken your medication?"

Not that it would matter at this point if he had. They were both distracted as her coat dropped to the floor and revealed the very little she was wearing underneath. Most of her clothes were packed and inside the door, and her uniform was draped across it in its garment bag, but she had come here intending for something to happen at least, and he was quickly rising to the occasion.

"Yes, Alais." Obedient. And breathless; she reached inside his robe now and started tracing her fingers over his chest and it was like electricity and heat all at once. His body was cold. It was normally cold, and on her worse nights Joss complained that he was like an ice sculpture but that meant that both his ladies had a touch like a brand. Palpable warmth. Erotic. Her fingertips came up and one finger traced the scar over his nipple.

"Good." Her mouth hovered, open, under his. "You've been drinking mint tea," she said then, and drew back. "Are you sure you're feeling all right?"

That was a deviation from the script. After her prolonged groping, he wasn't in the mood. "I'm fine," he almost growled, and pulled her in tight against him.

Her legs parted at exactly the right place to rub satin against his body and as they walked back the edge of her garment brushed against his hypersensitive organ and made him tremble. And his fingers dug tighter into her arms as they backed through the door to the bedroom. To collapse on the bed. The air turned damp in the quickened beat of a touch-starved heart. The sheets rumpled, wrinkled. One corner pulled off the mattress and exposed the faded pale surface.

And then she collapsed over him, pillowing her head on his stomach and he combed his fingers through her hair, spread it over his skin. He rarely went outside. The contrast of deep gold on pale and dull skin was startling.

"Are you all right?" he asked, fighting to keep the yawn from breaking up the words. She nodded, tickling his stomach with her breath.

"I'm fine," she murmured. He could hear a smile in her voice, wondered what it was about. "I'm more than fine."

She didn't elaborate when he made a noise of inquiry. He continued to touch, and when she started to touch him again it didn't matter so much. His body fascinated her, not working in some ways, working in all the ways that women seemed to like. Responsive, that way. He was hard again in a few minutes and she worked him in her mouth slow and curious, till his fingers were knotted in her hair to make her finish him.

Somewhere after that, they fell asleep, her tangled up against him with her feet pressed to the inside of his calf and her head tucked on his shoulder.

He woke up when Joss came into the apartment, looked over at the clock. It was eleven thirty. Not as late as it felt, for some reason. How long had he been asleep? Alais was still where she had been the last he remembered, so it must not have been very long. He heard Joss puttering around as quietly as she could manage in the kitchen, then silence.

And he was still half asleep when she opened the door, looked in to see his pale flesh against the sheets and the slightly more tanned flesh against his. Silently, she closed the door behind her and moved to the spare room.

One of these days he meant to tell her that it was all right, that he didn't mind. But he couldn't think of a way to do that before he fell asleep again.

Winter. Again. She was so sick of winter.

It was cold, and she hated the cold, especially now when her feet were swollen and her body felt so puffed up with liquid that any sudden movement or prick of, well, anything might pop her and send her exploding like a water bed. She had to allow extra time now to get anywhere because she couldn't move at a speed greater than waddling. This was just not right.

Joss sighed. She'd have to make the most of it, and anyway, it was only for a little while longer. And she had Rose and Rob and Tyler and the rest of the gang to keep her company, and Martine was turning out to be surprisingly adept at foot massages.

Still. It didn't change the slight feeling that she didn't recognize the person in the mirror. Someone with a puffy, gentled face and warm brown eyes and the tiniest bit of what might be smile wrinkles at the corners. Someone's mother. She was way too young to be someone's mother. Someone's young aunt, maybe.

"Stop that," she muttered at her belly, in which a person of unknown sex and, as yet, name was attempting to do cartwheels or something. "You keep that up I'll slip and fall on you, and you won't like that very much."

A shadow crossed her path in front of her. Birds flying overhead, startled out of the trees.

"Rob..." Thank god. For a second there she had been terrified. Unsure why, exactly, but frightened out of her mind. But it was just Rob standing there and looking as though he'd just jumped out of the tree. Probably he'd frightened the birds away. "God, you scared me."

Rob smiled.

"... okay, now you're scaring me some more. Are you okay?"

His mouth opened.

Flies came out.

No, not came out, that was way too tame a phrase for what was going on. Flies swarmed out of his mouth, like a cheap effect from a Uwe Boll movie. They came at her and she ducked and put her hands over her head but they got in everywhere, all around, into her clothes and hitting her in the face and belly like little stinging paintball pellets. And everywhere they went, it hurt. Stinging, itching, biting, whatever it was flies did, they did it.

Not just biting, they chewed. They chewed at her on her belly, and she flailed her hands to try and brush them off but they kept coming. They got into her eyes, into her ears, and the sensation was enough to make her scream and claw at her face. She felt like she was going mad. And while she was clawing at her face they continued to eat at her belly until it opened and disgorged the child, and then even more of them came down and they began to feed. And the baby, she had to protect her baby, except they were eating him up and he was screaming and mewling and pathetic and twisted. Dear god.

She recoiled in horror at how twisted he looked. It was her baby, but it was an abomination. And the flies kept eating and she tried to swat them away but it didn't work and she was screaming, and there was a voice screaming with her, no, hundreds of voices, all crying out to look at the abomination, at that thing's mother, at justice coming to them both...

... and there were no flies. No bugs. There was no baby, though when her shaking hands pressed to her stomach she felt the lack of it. Him, she thought. Felt strange not to be so big and heavy now, for those fleeting moments after the dream. She'd had this happen before, had the sensation linger, but never for so long.

Martine was sitting next to her. Holding her hand. Stroking her hair. The bed was soaked with sweat, not that she imagined that bothered him. The bed they shared got that way often enough from his nightmares and headaches, or, well, other and more pleasant activities.

"Sorry," she mumbled. "Um. Sorry if I woke you up or anything."

"It's all right," he said, which she took to mean she _had_ been screaming and had woken him up. Alais, too? She should ask. She couldn't bring herself to form very many words.

He came up and sat on the edge of the spare (and narrow) bed, folding her into his side and keeping his arm around her shoulders. She knew he probably shouldn't, it was Alais's night, but it felt good just to have him here. To have a warm body with her, and not be shivering in the dark with her nightmares. Martine knew. And so did Alais, she realized.

Joss burrowed into him and closed her eyes and tried to think of anything but the dream. Cute kittens. Robert Downey Jr. Her Comp-Rel paper, which only brought back memories of college and campus and led straight into nightmares and she swore, quietly, into Martine's ribs. He was too skinny, he needed to eat more. Burrito recipes. Wrap recipes. Making mole, and how godawful long it took.

She drifted back to sleep on thoughts of cinnamon and stewing pots, didn't even notice when Martine tucked her in and snuck out. This time, she slept deeply, and did not remember her dreams.

Alais left early the next morning. If she'd woken up when Martine left the bed the night before she didn't say anything. Possibly because she, too, had heard the thrashing and screaming, but he didn't know. She kissed him good-bye and slipped out the door with her public face on, didn't act any different than usual.

Joss did. More subdued, quieter, she made breakfast as usual but she didn't say much about what she'd been dreaming last night. Maybe nightmares were contagious.

"Maybe you should stay home today," Martine offered, after the third time she'd run into the corner of the kitchen counter. "Get some more sleep."

"I'm fine, I'll be fine. Besides, I got a Methods exam coming up," she waved it off. "Don't worry, I'll come straight home. Be home before you know it."

This was not as reassuring as it should have been.

She still left, and he left shortly after to run his errands of the day. After double-checking to make sure he had his cell phone in his pocket in case she needed him, and after dumping the sheets from the spare bed in the pile of laundry to be done. He knew what nightmares like that were like, he'd had them often enough. If he got it done before she got home she need never be embarrassed by it. And he was worried. Laundry and errands would give him something to do.

First was the pharmacist. He needed to get a couple of refills on his prescriptions, and it was better to do that while he still had a few days' worth left rather than wait until the last minute and go without for a couple of days. Twice was more than enough of that. Both the effects and Joss's scolding.

"Hey there, kiddo!"

Martine mustered up a smile. "Hey, Lenny."

Lenny was a good man who had an eerie resemblance to Morgan Freeman and a fondness for reminiscing about the days when he had been a young buck (as he called it) dancing and partying and playing the blues. Martine rather enjoyed it, not because of the subject matter or anything of the stories themselves, but because the man had a sharp memory for details and he, by contrast, had no memory at all. It was rather like a man with no rhythm and no ear attending a Broadway musical, that same distanced aesthetic appreciation.

"And how's the missus today?"

Martine smiled and shook his head. "Didn't sleep well. I tried to get her to stay home, but..." Shrug. Lenny understood. He thought Joss was Martine's wife, but he understood. He'd been married for going on near fifty years now, or so he said.

Lenny nodded as though he did understand. "But she gotta do her work, she gotta take care of business. I know, kiddo. I know. Wife's the same way, she got the arthritis in her hands and a big ol' machine in her hip but does she let up come time to plant the tomatos? Of course not."

Joss was horrible at planting anything. Martine chuckled in the direction of the counter.

"I'll just go round this up for you," Lenny said, and disappeared behind the counter.

Maybe he should ask the older man's advice on what to do for Joss. He, apparently, was no use when it came to getting information out of the young woman. Or any woman, for that matter. He could be flattering to them and flattering to himself but he had no idea how to steer the conversation towards what he wanted to know. Any aptitude he might have for that was all natural, and he could never tell when or if it would strike. Or even if it had. Whenever someone accused him of staring into them it usually referred to how he had been looking too long directly at them, or perhaps they had only felt guilty.

"Lenny, what would you do, if you were me? I mean, to get her to rest or... something."

Pills rattled into a tray, bottles rattled into paper bags. "Got to get her mind off whatever it is that's bothering her before you can get her to relax," he called over from down the last row of shelves. "Find her some really good book she'll like. Take her to a movie. Hell," he snorted, and Martine could hear him laughing quietly. "Chase her around the bed a couple times. That'll distract her."

He wasn't sure whether to laugh or blush at their sex life being discussed so publicly. "Uh. Thanks. I'll keep that in mind."

Lenny must have been able to spot his discomfiture, because he was still grinning when he came around the corner with the white paper bag. "Works wonders, kiddo, I tell you what. Right. Here's your usuals, here's that new thing the doc wanted you to try last time, take it or don't, it's up to you," he held up one hand against Martine's traditionally weak protests. "But that thing expires soon, and there's no telling when we'll get it in again, so might as well."

That was the wonderful thing about this pharmacy, and his pharmacist in particular. It had to be a drug they didn't often use, something they didn't carry until they needed it, and something they didn't see use for often. And Lenny didn't ask. He just trusted Martine and Martine's doctor, figured they knew what they were about, and didn't ask.

He appreciated the discretion when half the time he didn't have the answers, either, and the doctor was just guessing based on symptoms.

"Thanks, Lenny. I really appreciate this."

"Anytime, kiddo. Tell your lady I said, hi." Lenny waved, then beckoned the next person up. Martine managed to leave without getting dragged into further conversation.

He did keep Lenny's words in mind while he went through the next errand, which was to hit the grocery store to at least keep up the idea that he was eating. Healthy foods, almost all of it, and a block of Velveeta cheese for Joss, which was her one vice. Maybe that wasn't a bad idea? An evening of comfort food and something she liked to read, only now that he had to think about it he couldn't remember any of her favorite author's names to save his life. There had to be something he could think of before he got back home and entrenched himself there.

"Hey, do you have any leftover Valentine's..." he started, and the cashier shook her head before he'd even finished. "But you could try the chocolate store down the street. They usually have something."

"Thanks," he smiled, and she blushed. He still didn't understand why women did that so often. Joss didn't blush at all.

At least now he had some idea of a place to start. When she got home, she would find a sybaritic haven of decadence and delight, and nothing whatsoever of the real world to wind her up or make her tense. And maybe that would mean no nightmares tonight, for either of them. That'd be a welcome change.

The pen tapped against the desk. Tapped against her lip. The back of her finger. Twirled in her hair until the cap caught in her hair and she had to tug it free somehow without drawing attention to herself. She didn't like that. She liked the fact that her jaw was popping with the effort of suppressing yawns even less.

Joss had a funny taste in her mouth. It made her wonder what flies tasted like.

She didn't want to know what flies tasted like. She'd had chocolate covered crickets and grasshoppers, once. On a dare. The legs sometimes got stuck between her teeth but they hadn't tasted bad. Flies probably would taste bad. They were attracted to just about anything, especially the decaying things and the waste products of animals. They weren't good. Weren't clean. They represented decay, death and corpses, plague, things like that. Things she didn't want in her dreams.

Then everyone was getting up to leave and she couldn't remember if she'd gotten the last fifteen minutes' worth of notes. Or even what the entire lecture had been about. Joss closed her notebook and tucked it away, shouldering her bag and heading to the next class on autopilot. She even bounced off the railing as she headed up the stairs, hip colliding with the edge. Not looking where she was going. Not good. She didn't want to look in her bag for fear that the last hour worth of notes was gibberish.

"Hey." Dale elbowed her lightly as they went and sat down towards the back of the lecture hall. Dale was usually her go-to guy for entertainment during what was often a boring lecture. She didn't know what they were going to do today. "You okay?"

Joss shrugged. "Yeah, I'm fine. Couldn't sleep... didn't sleep well, is all."

He rubbed her shoulder a little and sat back as the lecture started. "I have caffeine gum," he said out of the corner of his mouth, like some kind of clandestine spy meeting. She laughed, then covered her mouth when the teacher glanced back their way.

Dale winked at her as the lecture started, but it was too hard for her to keep her attention on one thing, let alone both, so she had to ignore him. Her pen rolled between fingertips, scratched on paper, rolled again. The lecture started out well but her attention was flagging, like she was running a marathon. Idle word choices by the teacher could send her off into thinking about crows, or flies, or clutching her stomach as though she had a really bad cramp (and she was starting to feel that way), or worrying about Alais.

And she didn't even know why she was worrying about Alais. Maybe she really was pre-menstrual. Body aching, mind reeling because of a bad cycle, nightmares. It wouldn't be the first time, and she was already late.

The teacher asked something of her; she pinched the bridge of her nose and made some reply that she didn't even remember a second later. Maybe she did need to quit the rest of her classes for the day, go home. Take one of Martine's pain pills, one of the ones that was less strong than percocet but stronger than aspirin, and lay down. It was looking better and better of an idea.

And in another minute or five when she had decided that was what she would do she undecided it again. Alais might be there. Never mind that she actually probably wouldn't be, if she wasn't gone on a flight already she was with Paula, because this was Paula's weekend to spend with her. Her rational mind reminded her of both of these facts. The rest of her wanted to throw up, grab her notes, and run out of the class and from there she had no idea where she would go. Joss dug her nails into her palms, then opened her hand and clutched the sides of her desk so hard the edges pressed indentations into her hands.

"You okay?" Dale whispered. "Hey. Class is almost over, you want me to walk you back to the dorms?" His hand touched her shoulder and rubbed the fabric of her shirt against her skin, making her skin itch and feel raw.

She moved her shoulder away, flashing him as much of an apologetic smile as she could muster. "I'll be okay, just, you know. Girl stuff." That would get him to stop asking. He wasn't bold enough to venture into the realm of women's mysteries or icky stuff like that, not in detail. "Thanks, though."

Dale grimaced, as she'd expected, and all he said then was, "Aspirin?"

Not that Joss wasn't grateful for the painkillers, and it did quiet some of the muscle cramps and headache she was feeling (and maybe she was bleeding through her jeans already, wasn't that a fun thought) but it didn't help the nightmares. Or the jumpiness. Or the things she was starting to see out of the corner of her eye, maybe because of the sleep deprivation. She'd heard that did things to you like hallucinations after a while. Auditory, visual.

Was this what it was like to be Martine, all the time? It didn't occur to her until class was over and she was trying to focus on what day it was and what class she had next, and actually had to open her day planner notebook to where her schedule had been folded over and taped to the inside. The fact that she couldn't remember something so simple and routine nagged at her. Was this what it was like to be him? And if so, how on earth did he function as well as he did? New appreciation. She could have done without it.

Well, as long as she was able to get through the rest of classes today, then she could go home and rest on his bed, and sleep through dinner till whenever it was she woke up. Joss shouldered her bag and headed out, then changed direction and headed towards the right class this time. She was determined, at the very least, to last through most of her classes today. One hour at a time.

By the time she was done with classes she was even feeling more like human, with the assistance of copious drugs and enough water to drown a small elephant. She even felt like taking the bus, and walking the several blocks to Martine's place on her own. And the comfort of her cell phone against her hip was there, the rectangular outline worn into the denim of her jeans, meant she could call if she got too tired or too dizzy and ask him or someone else to pick her up. All right, then.

As it turned out, she _was_ still a little tired. She fell asleep on the bus, overshot her stop by at least five blocks, and ended up in one of the small market districts not too far from where Martine lived. It meant a bit more of a walk, but after her nap she was feeling somewhat more awake.

"All right, then," she murmured to herself, stuttering her thoughts and only half-realizing it. "Let's get to it."

The sky was clear again. There were no imaginary bugs crawling on her skin, no strange shadows. There was a small horde of no less than six blue jays on the hill in front of the tiny park, but that was an ordinary sort of unusual. She could more than live with that. No birds trying to attack her, nothing coming up to smother her, the world wasn't turning sideways into some sort of Stephen King nightmare. It was amazing, she halfway thought, how a few bad dreams could turn your whole world upside down. Her mother would have scolded her, told her to see her priest and confess whatever it was that she had done that was bothering her. Either that or she would have made the sign against evil and muttered something about _duendes, hadas malas_.

Her mother, bless her, was a good Catholic woman who nonetheless still crossed herself at the river against La Llorona. And maybe, Joss realized with a bit of a nose-wrinkle, had instilled in her daughter a superstitious fear of her own dreams.

Well, maybe she should fix that. Not a therapist, but maybe some kind of counselor. Someone who knew about strong family culture and alternative relationship structures. Joss had always had an awkwardness about therapists, starting from a well-meaning psychiatrist who tried to treat her for repressed grief when her father died and getting worse from there. Add to that the difficulty of finding one who was poly-friendly, especially to a college student who might just be experimenting, and she had a near impossible situation on her hands. Being condescended to made her belligerent and sarcastic. Being treated like a child who needed to be petted and taken care of was worse.

So dream interpreters weren't all that scientific, but they were more specific to her problem. And people like psychics and fortune tellers were more open to alternative sexual arrangements, or often pretended like they were, was her impression of things. And she was not up to seeing through the pretense right now. She'd take someone who could politely fake it.

The place smelled less of patchouli than she expected. It was more brightly lit; the door opened straight up onto a hallway with big glass windows that looked into an atrium in the center of the small building. Presumably this psychic person lived on the far side, past the locked door to the left and the locked door on the other side of the atrium, but most of the rest of the place was open and bright. Joss kind of liked the cheerful atmosphere, contrary to the murky mysticism most psychics seemed to project.

"Just a minute!" And then. "Why don't you come on into the garden?"

She did. There was a small table with three chairs around it, one with a couple of cushions in that seemed obviously for the psychic or whatever she was. Joss sat in one of the others. After a moment, an older man who looked to be in his sixties came out, drying his hands. He had shock white hair, walked with a straight and strong gait, and had an eyepatch over one eye. The other eye was bright, cinematic blue.

Joss blinked for a second. Somehow, she had assumed Sam was short for Samantha.

"You go on and finish," he called over his shoulder to the open door, and Joss caught a flash of someone disappearing around the corner before it closed again. "Now then, young lady. What can I do for you?"

"Ah..." Joss blinked and decided not to tell him she'd expected a woman. "I, um. I saw your sign..." That just sounded foolish. Of course she'd seen the sign, there was nothing else outside the house to indicate that it was a place of business. She shook her head slightly, trying to come up with the words.

The old man leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers, smiling as though he had all the time in the world to wait for her.

"I've been having these dreams," she said finally, pushing her fingers back through her hair and lifting her chin to at least try and appear like she knew what she was doing. "I don't know if I can call them all dreams, some of them are nightmares, but some of them are just... dreams. And in these dreams, I'm ... pregnant. Or I'm bruised and injured. Whatever, I'm not myself, and there's this man... and there's birds. Always birds, usually flying overhead..."

He didn't interrupt her until she was finished, despite the rambling. She appreciated that, even if she didn't so much finish as run out of words and then stare at him as though asking him to provide more, hands tightly held in her lap.

"Well," he said, after a generous silence into which she could have poured all kinds of babble if she'd had it. "I could give you the bog-standard dream interpretations, according to decades of Freud and Jung and other such learned men..."

"But you don't sound like you put much stock in that."

Sam the man laughed. "True enough, I don't." He had a twang to his voice. Something farmer-like. The kind that should have been combing horses and not reading palms. "But there's something I do put stock in, and that's all my years of experience. Tells me that when a girl's dreaming she's pregnant, might be she's getting some new ideas. You're about the right age, you're in school?"

"Ah... yes?" He was guessing. He was probably a good guesser, but he had to be guessing. Or there was something on her backpack from the school. She didn't look around to see, not and give him the satisfaction of knowing he'd made her look.

"So, you're in school, you're in one of what they call a transition period. You getting some new ideas, maybe. Might not be that you're planning to make a big change, but these ideas, they're new to you, even if you don't know you've thought 'em yet." He frowned a little, leaning in and narrowing his blue eye at her. "The birds, now. Birds are something else."

All she could hear was that one line from the movie about sparrows and psychopomps. "Birds mean..."

Sam kept staring at her. Like he was trying to peer into her cliche, something like that. It was unnerving coming from a man with only one eye, one bright blue eye with a pinprick pupil that wasn't entirely human. Normal people didn't have eyes like that. Not that kind of glowing turquoise blue, like water reflected off the surface of some birdbath filled with blue glass, deep blue, why had she thought it was turquoise? His eye was deep blue like the moment just after sunset and just before pitch black. And everything was silent. She couldn't even hear the flapping of their wings.

Whose wings? What?

Wait, what?

The water dripped along the edges of the fountain. Sam shook his head with concern and a sigh.

"Oh, honey. Darlin, you better be getting along home, now."

"But..." Joss had meant to ask him something, and now she couldn't remember what it was. Dammit. "Oh. Well, how much..."

"Nah, don't you worry about that, seems I couldn't help you much anyhow. But you best be ready for what's coming to you. Keep a spare set of clothes in your backpack, you got any medications or anything, keep them on you at all times. Something's coming, and it's coming fast."

She blinked at him. It was exactly the kind of pronouncement that reinforced her suspicions and the kind of thing a good reader would say. "Thank you?"

"You get along home, now. Tell your boyfriend I said hi."

No, she decided. No, she would not.

By the time she got home she was ready to burst, or collapse, or both. Collapse seemed like the better option when Martine opened the door as she fumbled around for her keys. What had been an ordinary task was made all the more difficult by the fog in her mind, the way her fingers refused to grip anything properly and her reflexes were too slow and tired to catch her keys when she dropped them. He caught her as she bent over far enough for her backpack to shift over her head and drag her down on her face.

"Joss?"

He sounded, not just concerned, but fully alarmed and ready to drive her to the hospital or wherever she needed to go. He sounded, she realized, a lot like her or Alais when he himself was having a fit. Which reminded her, and sent a shiver down her spine.

"Alais? Did Alais..."

Martine nodded, half dragging her into the room and half supporting her while she stumbled along. "She left already, she's probably in France now, or close to it. Are you all right?" One palm pressed to her forehead, not, she thought, that he could tell if she had a fever.

"I'm fine, baby. I'm all right." Joss tried to push his hand away, but it didn't quite work. Feeling her forehead, the tips of her ears, tipping her head up with a crooked finger to get a look at her eyes and how clear they were. Which didn't feel like much. She felt muzzy-headed. Bleary.

Just thinking clearly took more effort than she had energy for, and when Martine sat them both on the couch and pulled her against his chest she didn't resist. His skin felt cool against hers. His chest was solid, with a good thumping heartbeat beneath it, and she put her arms around his waist and snuggled into him.

"I just..." she added, after a minute or two. "I don't want... her to see me like this, you know?

She felt more than heard his assent, felt the nod of his smooth cheek against the top and side of her head. Small movements helped. Maybe this was what it was like to have one of Martine's headaches. Feeling as though everything could shatter her if she moved wrong or put a foot wrong or said the wrong thing. Not for nothing, either, she had just tripped over one or two too many things today.

"Do you want to make dinner?"

Joss thought about it. Dinner sounded good. Something she could make and eat that would smell and taste good. Simple actions with a predictable result, most of the time anyway. "Sure."

He waited until she had levered herself up and off the couch, awkwardly straddling him and balancing on one foot between the couch and the table for a second. She took his hand as they padded into the kitchen. It was easier when she was holding his hand.

Not in terms of logistics. They had to move around each other, chop vegetables one-handed and after the first two or three minutes of this she did let go. But she kept touching. One hand running down the back of his arm, the backs of her fingers brushing against his. Keeping contact, silent, the kind of silence she had wanted in school but hadn't been able to get. And the kind of contact with people she trusted to be reassuring in the ways that her school friends didn't get. She wasn't sure entirely when she had turned into someone who needed this kind of hermitage, but at least she had it. And she was grateful.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

She set the bowls down on the coffee table, chopsticks packed into the wet and sticky rice. They stared at each other for a second while each waited for the other to sit down, and then finally both went for the couch at once. It made for an amusing tangle of arms and legs.

Once they had gotten settled, though, she did at least feel like she owed him an answer. "I don't know. I've been feeling strange all day."

Conversation was impeded by both of them shoving down mouthfuls of teriyaki and hot rice with their chopsticks. Martine hissed and puffed out his cheeks when he got to the rice in the middle that hadn't had time to cool yet. She looked over at him and smiled.

"Whuh..." he said, then swallowed. "What kind of strange?"

"I'm not... like I've..." Joss poked the chopsticks. It sounded silly to say it out loud, like something that meant she should be wearing skirts, sandals, and crystals.

Martine tapped the other end of his chopsticks on the back of her hand, looked over at her with nary a smile. No, he wouldn't think it was silly at all.

"It's like I've had one foot in another world the whole day. Like I never woke up from the nightmare or something." She didn't know how else to explain it. The birds, the bugs on her skin. "It's like the nightmares I was having, like they were real. And they were coming to life."

He frowned. No, he didn't think she was making it up, didn't disbelieve her or anything, and he was truly worried about her. "Did something happen? Did you get hurt..."

Joss shook her head before he could finish. "No, nothing like that. Nothing like that, it was just feeling like the bugs were still on me. Or inside of me. I did go to a dream consultant guy..." Now, there was the skeptical snort she had been expecting. Then again, if Sam the man hadn't sounded so serious she'd be right there with her boyfriend.

"What did this dream consultant guy have to say?"

"I'm not sure. He didn't do any of the usual psychological crap, and he didn't ... well, he did tell me something that sounded more like homeopathic old wives' tales. But he said... that something was coming. And that I'd better be ready."

"That's exactly the kind of vague, generic..."

"No, something real. Something like you pack an overnight get out of town bag for."

That did silence Martine, as she'd half expected it might. It silenced her too, and made her set down her chopsticks with her bowl half finished. There should have been something to say, either to discredit the idea that an old man she didn't know could predict what was going to happen to her based on a dream, or, well. Anything like that. She didn't like feeling as though Sam had been right. And she didn't like Martine reinforcing that by not saying anything.

He took the dishes to the kitchen without saying anything and she turned on the news and drew the throw up over her knees, propping herself sideways against the arm of the couch. Her safe space had become oppressive and quiet, and it was making her irritated at Martine. Irritated enough to draw away from him when he came back and kissed the top of her head.

"Joss..."

She shook her head. Got up from where she'd just sat down. "It's all right."

He sighed. Audibly. "I didn't mean..."

"I think I'll just go to bed. Maybe get some more sleep."

Not that she could sleep. Between the events of the day and the not-fight they'd just had, that she probably halfway started herself or at least, that's what her mind wanted her to think, she was too worn out to sleep. She lay in the bed and listened to him putter around in the apartment until she could close her eyes again without crying.

He came up behind her after he'd turned all the rest of the lights off, after she'd closed her eyes. Lifted her, had to lift her entire upper body but he managed, and gently rolled her around and into his arms.

"You know I won't let anything happen to you," he told her quietly, brushing his fingers through her hair and moving it away from her face. "As long as I'm around, as much as I can. And I'm..." But he didn't seem to know what to say after that.

In a way, it didn't matter. It was easier just to turn into him and curl up and pretend none of it had ever happened. Easier to pretend she wasn't crying and let exhaustion get the better of her and drag her down to sleep. Easier, out of childhood habits, to pray that the dreams would stay away from her tonight and let her get some much-needed rest. And maybe in the morning things would be easier, too.

Murmurs and voices. I don't care what they say by the time the cold air hits my face and stings my skin. Worse when it hits the edges of the cut that still peek around the tissues. I'd kind of love to see their faces, though, when they realize I just spoke perfect Spanish. Rude Spanish, too.

Of course, that would take them understanding the language first.

"Stupid white bastards," I mutter. Then I shake my head, because that isn't fair, that's just doing to them what they've been doing to me, and even if they're bad and mean I don't have to be. I can be better than that. Usually, when I haven't been attacked and cut up by, um. By a very close friend. Then again, after the past few days I don't know what to think anymore.

He's not here yet. Where is the bastard? Where are you, you damned confusing son of a bitch. Scanning both sides of the highway for his headlights won't make me feel any better when they fail to appear.

"Martine!" I yell. It draws eyes, gets the attention of two patrons entering the bar. They think I'm crazy, clearly, by the way they look at me. I don't care.

The rumble of the engine makes me jump when I spin around, almost tripping on my heels and gouging the back of one of my ankles with my toenails. That wasn't the engine I'd been expecting.

My knight in shining armor or, well, black bike leathers and a denim jacket that had seen at least two thrift stores by the time he picked it up. He swings a long, lean leg off the bike and it still looks good. By the time he gets to me he's running across the gravel lot, catches me by the shoulders and I stumble and almost take us both down to the ground. "Are you all right? Joss, are you ..."

His fingertips touch my shawl and dislodge a piece of bloody, frayed tissue. I'll have to wash out the wound again if bits of tissue are getting stuck in it. "I'm all right," I catch his hand and move it away from tissue, cheek, and scarf, so that nothing else goes where it shouldn't. "I'm all right, I'm okay."

"No, you're not, don't be absurd. You're bleeding..." He must be impatient because he makes that huffy little noise and tugs the shawl entirely off, and my hair goes flying. Dark hair in my face and half the wad of tissue blowing away under the street lights. Bright red on darker red on white. I'm still bleeding. Great. "Jesu..."

"Martine."

"Sorry." He shakes his head, then takes my hand in a cold and vise-like grip and tugs me back towards the bike. And he's so impatient and angry that I don't get a chance to tell him that's not a good idea. I'm dizzy and barefoot. I can't do this.

"Martine!" I stumble after him. " _Joder_..."

Everything is swimming. Everything in my head is spinning, trying to catch up to itself. All the action that's taken place in the last three hours is straight out of fiction. It's unbelievable, even the small moments, and I don't know how to piece it all together in my head in a way that fits into the real world. Not counting the influence the blood loss is probably having on my thinking. I can't think. I don't know how much blood I've lost but the cut was deep and it took a ruined towel, a roll of toilet paper, and half a box of tissues before it slowed. My face. Infection will set in. I'll need stitches. It'll scar big.

Martine's talking to me. I can't focus. Every action has its individual accompanying thought. I have to think before I can act, think about picking my foot up before I can take a step. If I want to think about something it needs another thought to go with it, and I'm not up to that right now.

"... to me. Joss, speak to me, please..."

My fingers curl tight in the edge of his jacket, and that's not thought, that's anger. "I need," I rasped, enunciating my words like a drunk protesting at a police check-point. "Stitches. I need. A doctor." I roll my eyes at him even if I'm not angry with him right now. Not much, anyway. "You idiot."

Joss twitched awake with that feeling as though she were falling and had hit the bed at the bottom. Not a good feeling. And, she realized, usually only happening when she was half awake already, so what had woken her?

Martine, most likely. He was twitching in his sleep. The man was worse than a puppy, writhing, kicking. Doing strange things with his shoulders and twisting his back in ways that didn't look comfortable. Now that she thought about it, maybe that was part of the reason he got those headaches. She reached over by the bedside table to note that down on the pad of paper they kept for just that purpose when she caught sight of the clock. _Shit._ She was going to be late.

"Where are you going?" Martine mumbled, as she scrambled out of the bed with the sheet still half-tangled around her ankle.

Joss swore. "School, I'm going to be late..."

"It's Saturday."

In a repeat display of dexterity and grace, she tangled her feet in her shoes and a jacket that was on the floor and went sprawling. Knees scraped, heel of her hand scraped on the carpet. She swore again, bonking her head on the carpet as her tangled hair fell around her face in a dark froth.

"Saturday. Right."

"Come back to bed," he mumbled, and then he was out again, like a light. Joss rolled her eyes and untangled herself, crawling back into bed and trying to find some way of lying that wouldn't get skin flakes and carpet dirt all over the sheets. Eventually she gave it up for a bad job. They'd need to do the laundry soon anyway.

The second sleep was no more restful than the first. She woke _again_ with that feeling of falling onto the bed from a great height, rolled over and lay on her back for a second before deciding it was just useless. She could nap later.

Martine had somehow managed to steal all the sheets, wrap them around his torso like a burrito in saran wrap, and turn over onto his stomach. His back was bare down to his abdomen, the tiniest roll of flesh peeking over the fabric, showing how tight he'd pulled it. She should unbind him, probably. She didn't want to wake him up when he was getting a decent night's sleep. Morning's sleep. Something. Her fingers traced down his back and then she pressed her palm to his body between where she imagined his lungs were until she could feel the rise and fall of his shoulders as he breathed. Slow and even. It reassured her in a way she could never explain to him, easing the fear that he might just slip off in his sleep and she would wake up next to a corpse that used to be her lover. Not that she thought about it often but the fear lurked, gnawing at other, more reasonable worries while she wound down for the day or when she woke up at dawn.

She should unbind him. First, though, she got up and staggered into the bathroom, splashing some cold water on her face and scrubbing before she raised her head to look in the mirror.

" _Dios!_ "

It didn't look like her in the mirror, for a second. She'd read about the phenomenon, she'd even heard Martine describe it when he was having a bad day, but this really didn't look like her. She wanted to protest how much that wasn't her face in the mirror. After a second to calm her racing heart and blink she did recognize her sleep-bruised eyes, the lips thinned with stress and pinched by worry and exhaustion, the color in her cheeks from the sun of walking around everywhere. But for a second there, it hadn't been her. Blood rushed through her head and rang in her ears like wing-beats, thrumming against her skull.

"I need more sleep," she muttered, and turned to go back to bed. Her elbow knocked over the bottle resting on the edge of the sink. She hadn't noticed that before.

Joss crouched down to pick it up and barely missed clocking herself on the corner of the sink when she rose again. This was a refill, dated not very long ago. A refill for something she had just called in, hadn't she? "Oh, hell."

Opening the medicine cabinet confirmed it. Or seemed to, at least. Rows of white and that amber-orange color of pill bottles, splattered here and there with pink and yellow and blue caution labels. Do not operate heavy machinery. Take with food, or as much as she could stuff down him anyway. But there were more of them. She knew the innards of his medicine cabinet as well as she knew the depths of her purse. There weren't supposed to be this many bottles.

"Christ, Martine..." Joss shook her head, and crawled back to bed now more out of feeling sick and exhausted and daunted by the prospect of dealing with this again than anything lingering from the nightmares. All the supernatural stuff was banished from her mind when she had to worry about the source of his mysterious pains. And they were getting worse. And he wasn't telling her. "You stupid shit..."

He'd unrolled himself from the sheet and was stretched out, head halfway under the pillow. She slid her head under and joined him, pressing a kiss to the back of his shoulder.

The phone rang. Joss was asleep against his shoulder, finally. It took some doing to grab the damned device without waking her up more than she probably already was. "Martine."

"Hello, my love."

Alais. Not what he had expected, it was how late, there? He eased Joss off of his arm and looked up and over at the clock. Apparently they'd spent less of the day asleep than he'd thought, it was only late afternoon where she was. And she sounded tired, that had been what threw him off. "Alais? _Ca va_?"

" _Pas mal..._ " she answered, but it was a lie. He could hear it was a lie in the raspiness of her voice. "I think I have a cold, that's all. It happens sometimes."

It did happen. In her line of work Martine was surprised it didn't happen more often; Joss seemed to get sick every time she set foot in an airport. Vectors and sanitation and something to do with the difference from icy cold to boiling hot tarmac, but that wasn't it. This didn't sound like a cold. It sounded like the raspiness from talking too much than from mucus dripping down the back of a throat.

"Are you all right? Do you need to take a day or two off and come back later...?" This was a semi-valid question, considering the careful schedule they usually kept. It was also a way of asking if there was anything else going on in Paris that she wanted to tell him about. He wondered if he should have been watching the news.

It took Alais some time to answer. When she did it was with a jerky cadence and a low tone, as though she was still considering it. "I don't think so," she told him. "I think I will be all right to fly. I will call to tell you if I am not?"

Martine frowned, rubbed his temples with two fingers of his left hand. He was getting the headache already, and it was going to be a bad one by the way it had started and gotten worse in the space of the last exchange. "All right. But be careful, regardless."

"I will." There was a slight pause. "How is Jocelyn?"

"Joss?" Martine blinked, tried to focus. "She's all right. She's been having some nightmares, I think they're frightening her." Alais's voice was being drowned out by the blood rushing through his head, and slender fingers covered his as he bent forward over his knees. He heard Joss's voice coming through his skull like a watery warble of an ice pick.

"Hey, Alais? Hi... Yeah, good to hear from you too."

Now Joss's words were fading and he didn't hear what she said to Alais as she hung up the phone. Everything was either too muted to make out or too sharp, sound and now light as well. The same slender hands gripped his shoulders tight, turned him sideways and lowered him down to the bed. Joss was saying something. The weight on the bed shifted, light stabbed into his eyes for a second as she slipped into the bathroom. The dull thuds of the cabinet doors opening and closing registered, not so the sound of water in the glass. Cool crystal against his hand, though the water made him wince as it froze its way down his throat and into his chest, sending more spikes into his brain.

She went around with muffled thuds and sharp gunshot clicks, turning lights off and closing doors. His head was pounding in time with his pulse, and even fifteen minutes ago when he'd been all right seemed so irritatingly far away. Martine was aware that she had left at some point in the last minute, but time for him was stretching out and compressing so that he couldn't be sure how long a minute was anymore. He balled himself up on the bed and kept very still in the hopes that it would go away, soon, before the bright lights and doctors came out.

By mid-evening it was mostly gone. He had no intentions of attempting to eat anything yet, even the thought of forcing food down just in time for the pain to come back was enough to make him look longingly at the toilet, but Joss wasn't trying to make him. Both of them were relieved to have him able to be up and about right now.

The lights in the apartment were still dimmed almost to the point of blackness. The television was off, and Joss had her screen shield up on her laptop so that the glare of the monitor was funneled down to a narrow area he would have to work to look at. She had bundled him up on the couch in enough blankets to smother a baby elephant, so there wasn't much chance of that. He'd managed to free one hand and, casting aspersions on his ability to sit still, she'd sat in front of him. Now he was stroking her hair like a cat and finding relief in it. She'd commented that it was usually the other way around, and then fell silent.

"How did Alais sound to you?"

"Mm?" Joss didn't look up, but her fingers slowed on the keyboard. "She sounded all right. Sick, I guess, but okay. Why?"

He would have shaken his head if he thought he could get away with it without rattling his brains loose. Or whatever it was that passed for them in there. "She sounded strange when I talked to her. She called you Jocelyn."

Joss shook her head, paging back up for something and leaning back against the couch as she re-read. "She does that when she forgets, or when she wants to..." She stopped, hands hovering on the keyboard for a second. "When she wants to get my attention."

Martine's eyebrows shot up, but he didn't ask her to clarify. Not tonight, anyway. He'd have to remember that for later.

"But she wasn't on the phone with you, she was talking to me," he said instead. After a minute or three of sorting through his thoughts and picking out what seemed wrong, what felt wrong.

Joss's hands hovered over the keyboard again and then dropped down to her sides, rubbing her palms on her thighs. "Maybe she wanted to get your attention. Maybe she just forgot. Maybe she's stressed, who knows?"

She sounded aggravated. He hadn't meant to annoy her. Uncurling a little further from the mass of blankets and scattered pillows, he reached a little further to rub his hand over her shoulder and down her back. After a minute or two of this he felt her shoulders un-clench, and kept going.

"We should get you a dress for your graduation party," he commented. Though he was hardly in a position to go get anything from anywhere now, up to and including a drink from the fridge.

"What graduation party?"

Martine smiled. "The one we're throwing for you that's supposed to be a surprise. Don't let on that you know. I think Paula would be sad if she didn't get to surprise you with something."

Joss laughed. "And we wouldn't want that. All right, what did you have in mind?"

"Something slinky."

She threw him an arch look.

"I mean it. Something slinky, maybe with a low back..." His fingers trailed down her spine in a V-shape, down as far as he could reach and back up again. He was rewarded with a palpable shiver, the kind that would promise something more if he weren't still being ginger about his movements. "Just a little bit of cleavage, modest in the front, but leaving a lasting impression..."

He was really getting into this, brushing his fingers down around her neck to simulate a necklace. Joss arched back into him, hair brushing over his fingers, and finally pushing her laptop in front of her and climbing up onto the sofa in front of him, crawling over him and supporting herself on both hands on the back of the sofa. "You going to come clothes shopping with me?"

"Are you going to let me in the dressing room with you?"

She smiled. "If you're very good and feeling up to it, I..."

Something rattled against the windows. The wind, a tree branch, something. Both of them jerked upright, but between the curtains and the night sky outside it was hard to see anything other than shadows moving against the sliver of moonlight that came through. Just the wind. Branches beating against the windows, and it was just a trick of the light that they looked like a flock of bird wings.

Martine slid his arm around her shoulders and tightened his grip as she tucked her head to his shoulder, staring out the window. Her body betrayed the quickness of her breath even if the rest of her didn't, no sound and no wheezing. It was just a flock of birds, he wanted to say. Or a gust of wind rattling the trees.

Except there weren't any trees that close to the windows and most birds that flocked were asleep at night.

By the time he had figured out what it was he was asleep already, and his mind filed that away with the dreams and nightmares. If Joss had any ideas what happened, she kept them to herself.

They did manage to get the both of them up and ready the next day. Showered and dressed, and although Martine was still moving with care they managed to make it out and to the street level. Joss blinked as she came out into the light, looking like a cat that had just opened its eyes.

Martine smiled. "I should let you get out more, shouldn't I?"

"I don't know, maybe." Joss laughed, taking his arm and walking with a bounce to her step as they headed to the car. "Maybe I'm just glad that it's the weekend. My brain was getting tired."

He understood the feeling. There were times when he thought his headaches were at least half caused by his own brain getting tired, but you couldn't exactly tell that to a migraine specialist. Or you could, but they would only tell you to do less stressful things and drink more water, keep an eye on your blood pressure. There were only so many times he could hear that without going insane.

They went to the mall, the local mall, which had department stores at every spoke and a couple of more expensive boutique type stores within. Joss objected to the idea of spending too much money on her, at first.

"Don't look at the price tag," Martine advised her, feeling well enough to be cheeky in public, at least. She punched him on the arm, lightly.

"I don't ... I'm going to end up looking at the price tag anyway, you know that." And then she degenerated into calling him what were undoubtedly rude names in Spanish. He got the gist of what she was saying, at least.

"Kiss your mother with that mouth?"

She punched him in the arm again.

Dress shopping wasn't his area of expertise. He'd once joked with Alais that he was better at taking them off than he was at picking ones for her to put on. It didn't help that Joss wasn't comfortable in department stores or boutiques, women poking and prodding at her, coming at them with perfumes. After the second time that happened Joss took the woman to one side with a polite smile, and when they came back around that same woman looked up at them once and then scurried off to do something else.

"What did you say to her?" he asked when they were three stores down the hall.

Joss smiled. "I told them if you collapsed in the middle of the makeup counter that my second call would be to the police for assault and ..."

He laughed. "All right, all right, I get the picture. Hey, how about this ..."

Thunder cracked overhead. Both of them looked up for an instant, saw the torrents of water splashing down on the skylight where there had been dim sunshine five minutes ago, and scurried out from underneath it.

"Are you all right?"

He blinked. They were standing under the sign for the surfer sun and fun shop in front of some kind of surf and swim trunk display. It wasn't that far from where they'd been standing, he hadn't suddenly teleported or lost time, that second of which they'd been wondering and worrying about.

Thunder cracked overhead again and she looked up and that was when he realized that the pressure of the system was bearing down on him. A headache was starting in the back of his skull and behind his eyes simultaneously. Which what she was asking about.

"I'll be all right a little while longer. Let's go see if we can find you a dress."

Joss wrinkled her nose. "I hate dress shopping. What about that one?" She pointed at the store across the way from them. The purple dress in the window was elegant, but very grape colored.

"It wouldn't be bad if it comes in black..." He took her hand, tugging her towards the store.

"You're going to dress me up like a Barbie doll, aren't you."

"Well, I never had Barbies when I was a kid."

It was a lot harder to tug her when she was laughing like that.

They were coming out of the store when he collapsed. Right between the inner doors and the outer doors, in mid word, eyes rolling up in his head and dropping like a stone. Joss shrieked. She couldn't help it, and she felt ashamed and angry about it immediately afterward, but his head hit the soft rubber mat with a sizable thunk.

She dropped down to her knees beside him, the bag dropped from her fingers somewhere, she didn't see and it didn't matter, it was the farthest thing from her mind. He was unconscious, not moving, not even the fluttering eyelids of someone in a sudden attack of narcoleptic sleep in the movies, Joss, she reminded herself. That might not happen in real life. No one had seen them, or at least, if they had, they were hurrying on by.

"Someone call..." and then she realized that they might not hear her between the glass doors, right as someone swung open a door and hit Martine's foot. "Can you call 911? He just collapsed..."

The woman nodded, and the world slid sideways into a flurry of hand-wringing and hair-stroking and she wasn't crying, the tears weren't even threatening but she felt as though everything happening around her wasn't touching her. All she could think of was what happened if he died like this? Right here in her arms. She couldn't take it. She wasn't capable of living without him in her life and with the memory of his body cooling in front of her. Her mind went over and over the worst case scenarios, she had to know he was breathing every moment and every time his chest fell with the last expended breath she held her breath until it rose again. And it took forever for the ambulance to get there. At least, it seemed that way.

A man in blue uniform trousers and a white shirt was pulling her off of Martine and she hadn't noticed him come up behind her. When the roaring in her ears popped she could hear him say, I'm a paramedic.

"It's okay, I'm a paramedic, just... come over here, that's it."

They were putting an oxygen mask on him. Joss stared intently until she could determine to her satisfaction that he was breathing. "His name is Martine..." she mumbled, then, louder and clearer. "His name is Martine... there should be ID in his wallet." Which was in his pocket. He'd put it back in his pocket, hadn't he? "He has... medical conditions..."

They'd, both she and Alais had made him write all of his allergies and all the medications he might be on at any given time on an index card and keep it in his wallet. It was battered and soft, now, but it was still legible. She thought one of the paramedics threw her a grateful little glance but she wasn't entirely paying attention either.

"All right, it looks..."

Which was when Martine opened his eyes.

Promptly closed them again, but he'd opened his eyes there for a second. And the way they were closed was less his unconscious face and more his pained expression, shutting his eyes to keep out the light and try and block out the noise.

"He has migraines, he gets migraines," Joss explained, as they laid him back on the gurney and started poking him with things, taking his temperature, blood pressure, something. Something medical. "He gets migraines, extremely sensitive to light and sound..."

"I know, ma'am, it's all written down." The paramedic soothed her, leaving off working on Martine for a moment and taking her by the shoulders to steer her to a nearby bench.

Joss wasn't sure she wanted to be steered, but her legs wouldn't work properly, nor her arms. "I don't know... I didn't... write this one." Apparently her thoughts weren't working too well, either.

The paramedic, who said his name was Steve, crouched down in front of her and took her wrist in his hand. He had a soft touch, she noticed. His fingers felt soft against her skin, warm but not noticeably hot. It was nice. He was taking her pulse, checking her eyes. "You two are together? How long?"

"A couple of years... is he going to be all right?" she asked, then shook her head. "I'm sorry, you probably get that question all the time before you can really tell."

Steve smiled. "It is too early to tell, but he looks like he'll be all right. They'll probably want to take him to the hospital for some tests. It's possible he just fainted, sometimes it does happen. A build-up of fluids in the wrong place, even temporary, can cause dizziness or fainting. Sometimes people just black out for a second and it's very hard to figure out why, and then they're fine. I wouldn't start inventing emergencies just yet."

"I wasn't..." before she realized that he meant her panicking now, not her calling them in in the first place. "Oh. No. I guess not."

"You just stay here and take deep, even breaths, okay? Sit and rest for a bit, we'll let you know if he's going to the hospital." Steve softened the order with a hand on her shoulder, rubbing gently over her back. Joss found a weak smile for him somewhere in the bottom of her reserves and then waited until he was back with Martine to slump over.

Deep, even breaths, huh? That was far easier said than done. Martine was talking quietly with the paramedics but she could tell even from there, even by his voice that he was annoyed. He sounded the same as always. If he came out of this all right after scaring her half to death she was going to kill him. Well, first she was going to get him home, get him on the couch and hug him till his eyes popped for a few hours. Then she was going to kill him.

He'd been about to suggest that they talk to Alais about finding jewelry for her when the world went black with a thunderous buffeting of many small pressures around his head, like ten or twelve pairs of gloved hands slapping him around the face. And then darkness.

He woke up when the air started tasting funny and there was something over his face, over the back of his head, restricting him. He tried to take it off and the hands that covered his and pulled his hands away were bigger and more male than he was used to. Martine would have fought except he didn't have the strength. He could barely make his body move the way he wanted it to.

"I'm fine. I'm all right, I just need to sit down for a second..."

Cold metal pressed against his skin. "You're not all right, not until we say you are..."

The rest of it was lost in the sudden rise of murderous anger that clenched his throat and made him choke on his bile. He would not be ruled. This would not be tolerated. He would not be ruled over by some...

... some...

Martine blinked and submitted to the blood pressure cuff out of confusion more than willingness. His eyes closed as he tried to regain control over his emotions, his mental state. This was, in a way, more frightening than the headaches. He didn't know where this had come from.

Shutting out the world because of a migraine was remarkably similar to shutting out the world because he had been overstimulated, which was the only reason he could think of as to why this had happened. He had to breathe, to focus and try and regain his internal equilibrium. Balance of the spirit. Focus on Joss's voice.

Poor girl. He had scared the crap out of her; she had an accent for the first time since he'd met her, consistently, anyway. And she was babbling at the paramedic sitting by her with what sounded like tears in her voice. She hated crying in front of people. She hated coming unraveled in front of people. He felt like he should make some sort of sign or tell her somehow that he was all right, except the paramedics were checking him out still. Anything he could have said would have been contradicted. So he tolerated their poking and prodding right up until they told him they wanted to take him to the hospital, at which point it was too much.

"I'll be fine," he told them, pulling off the oxygen mask and starting to clamber down from the ambulance. He took it gingerly, not wanting to trip and go sprawling because of a sudden attack of dizziness he hadn't anticipated.

One paramedic halfway helped him, but the other looked on with forbidding glare and furrowed brow. "You're not fine, and you should at least come to the hospital to get checked out. You hit your head, you could have a concussion or some other type of damage..."

Martine looked over at Joss again. She would kill him if he was bleeding to death internally and didn't know it. He remembered, a year or so ago, when that actress had died. How she'd quietly fussed over every headache for the next three weeks, more so than usual.

"I'm fine," he said, but slowly, not looking around at either medic. "But if you tell us what to look for, I promise, I'll get someone to drive me to the hospital as soon as we see some sign of something wrong."

Falling down in a fainting fit was a sign of something wrong. He could see that answer in the look in their eyes. "Dizziness, unequal pupils, non-responsive..." they rattled down the list of symptoms that could mean he had some undiscovered injury. There were a lot of them. He was glad Joss wasn't paying attention to this.

"And if I get any of those symptoms..."

"Any _one_ of those symptoms." As though he might overlook the first two.

Martine had been through the local emergency rooms a couple of times, he knew better than to overlook any symptoms when it came to brain disease or injury. "Any one of those symptoms, we'll come in."

"All right." At least that partly placated the man, who started undoing all the various pieces of medical equipment and freeing Martine from the mass of beeping plastic things. In another moment Joss had jumped down from where she'd been perched and had her arm tucked into his, clinging.

"Are we going to the hospital?" she asked, her tone more worried than expectant. It was a bad sign when she wasn't bossing him around for his own good.

He shook his head anyway, carefully after the first jerk sideways, but shaking his head didn't seem to hurt. Dark hair flopped over his forehead and into his eyes. He'd need a haircut soon. "We're going home. I'm going to lie down, rest up, I'm not to fall asleep though, and you'll have to keep me up. Without overexertion," he added, but she wasn't up to that kind of humor.

"I'll keep an eye on you," she promised, and he tucked her into his arm.

"You'll have to drive me home," he told her, as they rounded the ambulance and headed to the car under the watchful eyes of the paramedics.

She was silent the whole way home, except for terse responses to his questions about what she wanted for dinner and did she want to study and just order in. After the first few rounds of that he'd fallen silent, too, and they stomped their way up the stairs with the tension buzzing between them. If he hadn't had a headache to begin with he was developing one now.

The question hovered on his lips while she put the dress away, while she went to the fridge to pour herself a glass of water. He didn't ask it until she was curled up on the couch in a blanket, putting both a narrow table and the couch between them. Not that he thought she would be violent or was capable of being violent, at least towards him. But he still felt like he was on the wrong side of something here. And he knew she was mad at him.

"Why are you so upset with me?" he asked, finally, leaning against the table and trying to get her to look at him.

The blatant lie fell from her lips automatically, without her ever lifting her head. "I'm not upset..."

"Joss."

Now she did lift her head and look at him, and when he stopped flinching he realized that no, she didn't look angry. Although she was upset. But she looked tired, too, and when she was tired she tended to snap. When she got worried she snapped, and he should have realized this earlier.

He came around the couch and sat down in front of her, tugging a foot out from under her butt and starting to rub. "I'm okay. Okay?" Except for a headache, but it was a stress headache, and as far as those things went it was a very mild one. He didn't seem to be suffering any of the after-effects that the paramedics were worried about.

"Okay," she nodded, but she had lowered her head again and wasn't looking at him anymore.

"J--" Martine swallowed back the noise of frustration. "Will you please talk to me?"

"Why? What's the point? You've already made up your mind." Her voice was strained, her hands twisting up at the blankets. Her accent was back, too. It was the most he'd ever heard it in one day. "You're fine, you said so..."

"But you're not fine. You're upset. So let's talk about that..."

She glared at him. "Is this where we use the I-think and I-feel and I tell you politely that I think you're a fucking idiot for not going to the hospital and at least getting looked at? That I don't think you care about yourself or what's happening to you when we have to fight with you to get you to take any medication or go to the doctor to find out why you're falling over every few days? That..."

He watched her cover her face with her hand, pushing thumb and forefinger up above her eyebrows as her jaw twitched and worked. She was trying not to cry. He tried to remember the last time he had seen her cry, and couldn't.

It didn't make too much sense. He wasn't dying, there were things wrong with him, yes, but it wasn't anything life-threatening. Not that anyone had mentioned, yet. "I'm..." He frowned. "I don't like doctors. I don't like hospitals. They smell, and they're full of chemicals, and..."

"And they have machines, scanners that can figure out what's wrong with you and fix it!" She launched a pillow at his head.

He ducked, at least. It bounced off the back of his head and down to the floor. "Joss..."

"You _keeled over._ You were unconscious on the floor for, like, five, six minutes! You didn't get up, you didn't respond, I couldn't wake you up..."

"I'm here now," Martine took her wrists in his hands so his thumbs could massage her palms, trying to pull her hands away from her face. Her eyes were angry, tear-stained, but still angry. "I'm here. I'm not going anywhere, and I'm not dying. I probably just... ate something. Or didn't eat something. Do you remember the last time we fed me?"

He tried for a smile, to make her smile, and while it didn't work it at least didn't seem to hurt. Her beautiful brown eyes softened from a furious glare to a sullen one, and he was finally able to pull her close against him. This close, Martine felt the tension in her shoulders and back start to ease under his hands, even if it took several minutes.

"I think I'm going to go take a nap," she mumbled into his chest, then pulled away and off the couch. Instead of an abrupt jerking motion, though, it was smooth, and her hand caressed down his arm as she moved. "You get to stay up and watch TV or something."

"I can't come to bed with you?" he pouted.

"Not with a maybe concussion you can't. Next time, maybe you'll remember to eat something."

He did come into bed and tuck her in though. He insisted on that.

The television was less than stimulating. After an hour and a half of police chases, nature documentaries, and obstacle course shows with people faceplanting into padded walls he turned it off and crawled into bed with her.

Joss was out like a light, of course. She was exhausted; so was he, but he did at least admit that they had a point about the possible concussion. Falling down and hitting his head could have done it. He'd stay awake as long as they told him to, he could do that much. Especially if staying awake meant curling up and watching her sleep. His fingers brushed down her arm, back up again, watching her sleep and twitch and whisper and moan.

As worried as she was about him, he was worried about her. She hadn't been acting like herself lately. Distracted and restless, more so than he would have expected even given her current school load. He would have said she was sick except that she didn't act sick in any other way. Her temperament was sick. Her body was fine, she was still walking all around town and still bossing him around and capable of enforcing it by levering him up off the couch or shoving him down onto the bed. But she was stressed by something. He didn't think she even knew what she was stressed about or it would have been more directed. This was vague and random and he knew her well enough to know that something was going on.

And he couldn't ask her about it because she would just worry more. Which would defeat the purpose.

"You are the most infuriating woman I..." he started, brushing a kiss over her forehead. And then the pain hit.

It started in the front of his head and pushed its way all the way to the back, a hard, white hot and ice cold spike driving through the center of his brain. He fell back onto the pillow and gasped because he couldn't get a good breath. Everything hurt, everything felt as though it was weighing down on him and he had time for a few panicked thoughts that maybe she was right, maybe he should have gone to the hospital and he was so sorry that he hadn't listened to her. Something was beating against his head, gentle gloved hands, or something, brushing through his hair. Rhythmic thumping.

He heard something. Singing was the closest he could call it, some kind of choral, chorus of voices, he couldn't tell, he could barely hear it but it sounded like someone had left their mp3 player on Gregorian chant at full volume.

And then he blinked and it was gone. The pain, the sound, the feeling of hands on his face.

Not all of it. There was still, now that he could focus, the feeling of hands on his face, but it was like a memory of someone touching him. Joss, or Alais, except the hands were bigger than either of theirs and had callouses on them where both of his girls' hands were smooth. He knew their hands intimately, to the tiny jagged scar on Alais's little finger and the writing callous on Joss's.

These hands were larger, with thicker fingers and about as big as his. He remembered from all the times he'd had his face in his hands and trying not to breathe too hard.

 _I'm hallucinating. Joss was right, I should go to the hospital._ He started to shift, to nudge her awake and try to think of a way to tell her that they should go to the hospital without freaking her out more than she was already. _It's not a problem of the body._

The thought came out of nowhere and felt strange. Like it didn't belong in his head. He stopped nudging and closed his eyes again, trying to focus on the voice. Which was gone.

 _A problem of the body or of the soul?_

And now it was back again. And that question was irritating him. You couldn't get headaches from a pain in the soul, souls didn't get cancers. There was no painkiller for a soul, no matter what you

 _outgrown your body_

"And now I'm hallucinating," he muttered. "Great."

He tried to sit up and fell out of the bed.

Joss sat up instead, flailing, one hand slapping the sheets where he'd been. "Martine? What..." She looked over her shoulder at him. "What are you doing on the floor?"

His legs were tangled up in the sheets. His body was soaked in sweat. He blinked. "Waking up?" Martine looked up at her with a puzzled expression that was only starting to comprehend how worried she'd been about him plus how bad it was to sleep with a potential concussion. And then he'd fallen onto the floor. Great. "Please don't hit me?"

"I'm not going to hit you," she sighed, grabbing a couple pillows and bunching them up together where she had been sleeping, then leaning over the bed. "I'll wait till you're feeling better. Then I'll hit you when you're not looking."

Now that sounded like the Joss he knew and loved. "You sure we shouldn't go to the hospital? I mean, I could have hit my head..."

She stared. "With it so far up your ass, maybe you did. You have thirty seconds to get into bed before I really do hit you."

He was in the bed before she'd completed the threat.

Hot, sweaty, in bed, hands on skin. They'd argued for a bit, more sniping at each other than real arguing, and somehow it had turned into kissing and from there to other things. Things that involved less talking and potential for argument and more fun and potential for messiness.

Her lips tasted of tears and snot and the faint, fading traces of the orange smoothie she'd had at the mall, little bursts of orange up under her lips. They stopped trying to talk after the first couple of kisses and just pressed together, her legs tangling around his hips and pulling him closer, his hand palming her breast and pinching her nipple lightly between the length of his thumb and forefinger. By the third or fourth time her hips bucked up against his he was hard and panting and reaching around behind and up under her shirt to unclasp her bra.

"Hey, hey, hang on..." Joss breathed. She was on top of him, so she could deny him if she wanted, but right now she seemed determined to tease him. She stopped with her knees dug into the bed and the wet heat between her legs close enough for him to feel it, his hips straining up to plunge into her.

She still didn't let him, reaching over for the box and fumbling for the small gray square of safety. Better that way, but he still didn't like the delay, and made her pay for it with one hand sliding up her thigh as she peeled the condom out and slid it on. His thumb brushed her clit and her fingers jerked as they stroked back up his length.

"Fucking..." she growled, leaned over and kissed him again, hard and aggressive. He liked that. Liked her aggressive as she slid back over him and took him in deep and he arched up against her, and the sound of her as she felt him thrust.

Sex was easy. Sex was hot and sweaty and empowering, engrossing. Making him feel strong again, fingers digging into her thighs and pulling her down onto him again and again, making him feel swallowed up in the sounds she made and the way she squeezed him and the way she kissed him, demanding more. And then he rolled her onto her back and took more, and it gave them both some moments where they didn't have to think about what had happened or what was happening, all they were thinking about was each other and the pleasure they took.

Deep, wet pleasure. Fierce, sweaty pleasure. Hands sliding down her arms for a second, pausing, bringing her wrists up above her head and pinning them there with his hands as he fucked her, knowing she liked this. The imagination, sensation of being bound without actually being tied up. She wrapped her legs around his hips and rocked up against him, and he heard her breath change as she quivered around him, turn to panting uncontrolled whimpers. Indulging her darker fantasies without the risk that, he forgot what, moaning as his muscles bunched, body lurched forward as he came.

And now, hot and sweaty, they could rest. Her fingers slipped down his back as he released her, easing out to plop sideways against the pillows and catch his breath before he tossed the condom.

Joss said something. "Hm?" he blinked, trying to make his mind make sense of the words. Maybe he was more tired than he thought.

"Rad balmorit," she said. "Ahr zhanoyu..." And other things that made as little sense, or less. Her words slipped from sounding like one language to another and only stopped when she realized he was staring at her in increasing panic.

"Ku?"

"I don't..." Martine shook his head. "I don't understand. You're not making sense..."

Whatever came out of his mouth must have made as little sense to her as it did to him, because she scrambled up to sit with her back against the headboard. She said something again and he shook his head; no, he still didn't understand her.

Hands shaking, he peeled the condom off and flicked it towards the trash-can, missing where it landed and unable quite to look at Joss, who suddenly looked even more terrified for being naked. Shower, a shower to clean up and clean off and figure out what was going on, maybe it would wake him up and this whole freaky business would stop. He pointed at the shower, still not quite able to look at her but making an effort, cupping her cheek in his hand and kissing her forehead. He could at least try to be reassuring.

She grabbed his arm as he passed her, looking up at him. Their eyes met; less white around the beautiful deep brown as she calmed, or was more able to fake being calm at least. Even if it was faking it, it helped. Joss pointed to the medicine bottle by the bed, to where he knew the Doctor's name was even if he couldn't read it (and that seemed to point to a problem in his brain rather than hers, Christ, what now) and the phone number beneath it. Then to the phone. She was going to call the doctor.

He nodded. Probably the best thing to do right now was to let himself be examined by someone who knew what they were doing. Even if he felt fine. Better than he had in a while at least. He took her face in his hands and kissed her again, this time on the mouth, and ducked into the shower for a quicker scrub than he'd intended. She could give the doc the rundown on what had happened when the world tilted sideways, and he'd be out in time to explain what was going on. If he could make himself understood.

Maybe the doctor made house calls.

After the shower he bundled up in the white fluffy bathrobe Joss had left on the warmer for him, plopped himself on the couch while she puttered around in the kitchen. The apartment seemed quieter than it should have been or than it normally was, which he figured was due to his trying not to speak or hear anything. Strange how these things worked. He hadn't noticed until now how the background murmur of the television or the radio or Joss or Alais humming or singing was always present.

Neither of them made a sound if they could help it. Maybe they were both afraid to. He was, just in case it came out in some way that didn't make sense or that he couldn't understand, or that she couldn't understand.

"One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small..."

His cell phone alarm crooned its warning at him and made him actually jump from the couch to the back of the couch, ending up half seated on the edge with his feet in the seat cushions and his arms pinwheeling to keep himself in place.

And after he'd determined that he wasn't going to fall ass over teakettle onto the carpet, he realized that he'd understood that.

Joss was looking at him strangely; he shook his head and pulled himself to his feet with the back of the couch. "I think..." he started, and her eyes went wide again as she slumped against the kitchen island with relief. "Oh thank god."

"You're talking again." She came around the island, around the couch as he stuck out his legs and skidded down the back cushions. "I mean, you were talking before, but... now you're making sense."

"And so is everything else," he told her wryly, reaching out and folding her into his lap, pulling her against his chest and hugging her tight enough that she squeaked. Time ticked by while they clung to each other, her squirming around to put her arms around his shoulders and tuck her head down and him with his arms tight around her waist. After a few minutes he remembered. "Oh, right. Medication..."

"Right." She wriggled off his lap and into her corner, tucking her feet under the middle seat cushion and watching him as he crossed to the bedroom and rummaged for his meds. Not that very many of them were regular at all, most of them were on an as needed basis, and some of the time he ran through the regular ones quicker. This hadn't been one of those weeks.

Pills washed down with water. It maybe should have been tea, but it was water. Then back onto the couch and sitting, it turned out, with his legs drawn up and Joss leaning her back against his shins. That was all right. He could run his fingers through her long dark hair and watch it curl in waves around his fingers.

"The doctor said it sounded like a form of aphasia," she started, out of thin air, when he'd just about managed to forget that anything strange had happened at all. "That it could have been brought on by the head injury or whatever causes the headaches or stress or something completely unrelated to any of those, it's hard to say without more description of the symptoms. Or some tests."

That was added, that last part, to get him into the hospital. To get him checked out. Which, he knew, was rational and reasonable, her being a person who cared about his well being and him being a person whose well being was in question. It was a sign of caring and affection, and he should have taken it as such. He was even a little surprised at his own hostility and arrogance when he responded. "I don't think I need any tests. It was probably just a... just the stress and the headache."

He drew his head down into his shoulders and his shoulders back into the couch when she sat up, turned around, and stared at him. "Come again?" Sanity made an attempt at reassuring itself.

"It probably wasn't anything... we can go to the hospital in the morning if you think..." Which was better than the first few things that had come to mind to say, and when had he wanted to say that to Joss? Of all people. Martine swallowed.

She was still looking at him as though he had lost his mind or she was about to hit him for real, he couldn't decide which. "In the morning."

"It's not anything urgent, and we would have to go to the ER anyway. And then we'd just sit there in the emergency room for three hours only to find out that it was just overexhaustion anyway." He thought it sounded reasonable, at least. "If we go tomorrow we can make a same-day appointment, we don't have to miss more of anything than we have to, and we don't have to wait in an emergency area full of sick people..."

Joss didn't look happy about it. But she didn't say anything either, and after what he thought was a very reasonable presentation of arguments he wasn't sure she could say anything. Well, she could. She always could, but it wouldn't have any merit to it.

He winced inwardly even at thinking that. He'd never been so dismissive of her thoughts before, had he? Or was this just a new side effect of watching what he was thinking and how he was thinking it so intensely? Or was he really becoming that blase about his illness? Was he losing his mind? Was he losing his mind in a slower, more insidious way than aphasic fits and passing out in the mall?

Fingertips curled under his chin and tipped his head up to look at her. He hadn't realized he'd curled up any further.

"I really don't want to run out tonight, okay?" he said quietly. Joss nodded. "I just... want to go back to sleep."

She nodded again and stood, heading back to the bedroom and, by the sounds of it, getting dressed. He swung his feet to the floor and sat up, looking over at the doorway.

"What are you doing?"

Joss was dressed and had her sweater on, hood up when she walked back out again. And her keys in her pocket; he could hear them jingling. "I'm going for a walk," she told him, hunched and even-voiced. "I can't deal with this right now."

"You can't... Joss!"

"I'll be back soon."

The door closing behind her didn't sound like a 'soon,' it sounded like a finality. An ultimatum. Maybe he was being paranoid again. Or maybe they had just had a fight and he hadn't noticed, that had happened before. He wondered if there was any way for him to tell, or to trust what input he was receiving from the outside world. He wondered, for a second, if Alais would have done the same. Alais probably would have hit him with something first. She was less worried about hurting him physically than Joss, maybe because she lashed out physically so seldom.

He curled up on the couch, arms wrapped tight around the pillow and fingers digging into the fabric. Maybe he could get a little sleep before she came back. Hopefully not a lot. Hopefully she came back before that and they could curl up in bed together and apologize and make everything right again.

Joss had her hands shoved into her pockets tight enough that the knuckles pressed against her jeans. Her shoulders hunched, back getting knots in it the moment she set foot to the pavement. She'd lost track of what time it was. Late enough that the sky was purple, or maybe that was early enough, by now. In the city it was a lot harder to tell when it was getting to dawn, but she only knew that because she'd read it in a book somewhere.

She was thinking of anything and everything she could to keep from thinking about what had happened upstairs. The apartment complex had a small courtyard where she could walk in circles, or she could go out and cross through the streets, pass through the small park behind the complex, get lost on the sidewalk. Both had their appeal. She wasn't sure when the angry would wear off and when she'd want to go upstairs and curl up with him again, or when the fear of finding him unconscious on the floor with some kind of brain damage would get to overriding that angry. The only thing she knew for certain was that she wasn't going home.

Maybe she'd make him sleep on the couch. He could do it, he could pass out anywhere. And then she could have the bed.

By the time she came around under the fourth spotlight she was crying. Tears of anger and stress, hands pulled out of her pockets and arms wrapped around herself, fingers curled into the fabric of her sleeves. This was _pointless_. Joss told herself, again and again, a litany in her head. This is pointless. Get a grip. Do something useful. This isn't helping. And back to _this is pointless_ again.

It was some stupid hour of night here, but it would be morning in France. She didn't know where that idea came from but fumbling her phone out of her pocket and almost dropping it twice only convinced her further that it was the better idea.

"A-Alais?"

Alais muttered something to the person in the room with her, it sounded like they were making breakfast. Joss's French wasn't good enough to follow. Then, "Joss? ... Wait, what time is it?" Her accent was thicker. It was always thicker when she'd been in France for a day or two. In the States it was barely noticeable.

"I don't know. I'm outside. He's upstairs." It seemed easier, safer to start with the basics. The stuff that wasn't relevant. "He passed out today."

A chair scraped across the floor on the other end of the phone, something clinked against china. "He what? Wait, wait. Upstairs where?"

"In the apartment. Stupid bastard wouldn't go to the hospital." Joss wiped her nose on her sleeve. It was dirty anyway.

"Upst..." Alais said, and then several more things in French that Joss didn't know but that didn't sound good. She finished up with _mere_ or _merde_ , both of which Joss knew.

"I'm sorry! I tried to get him to go to the hospital and, yeah, he said he would go in the morning, but I didn't exactly want to try knocking him out and dragging him..." She pushed a hand through her hair, turning in a circle and so distracted she tripped off the edge of the pavement and into the grass.

Alais was saying something. "Joss. _Joss!_ "

"Yeah?"

"Deep breaths."

She nodded, feet planted in the mud with the dew from the grass seeping into the toes of her sneakers. More silverware clattering against china, and she heard furniture moving. A cabinet door or a regular door close, and footsteps on hardwood. "I'm going to take some personal time," she heard Alais say. "I'm going to catch the next plane back, and I'll be there soon. Okay?"

Joss nodded again.

"Is that okay?"

"Okay? Okay. Yeah." Deep breaths, right? She had to calm down. Alais was coming home, she wouldn't be all alone with Martine, and they'd figure something out. Besides, he was going to the hospital tomorrow. They'd get things figured out. What day was tomorrow, anyway? Monday, she thought. Something like that.

"I'll be home as soon as I can," Alais was saying. "Just hang in there until I get there. And tell me everything that's happened since today. What else happened?"

That was true, Joss thought, telling Alais the bare bones of what had happened earlier in the bedroom. Fainting was one thing, but it wouldn't have been nearly so panic inducing if he hadn't come over all strange and speaking in tongues later on. Alais didn't know what to do with that either. There was more swearing in French, the sound of fabric and footsteps again, and Alais's voice got a little shakier. Strangely, it helped calm Joss down.

"I don't know what it means, but I'll ... I'll get some rest and then I'll dig up what I can on the internet, see if I can talk to his doctor about it. I don't know anything about it, but..."

"We'll find out." The sound faded out for a second and then was back. "We'll figure this out. I'll be home soon, and then we'll go see the doctor all together."

"Okay." Joss picked up her feet and climbed back up the hill she didn't remember descending, hitting pavement with more purpose and more energy and calm than she had in a while. In several hours, if not a day or two. "See you soon."

" _A bientot_."

The morning wasn't even over yet and the day was already surreal. Joss had gotten Martine to call the hospital and make a same-day emergency appointment and then been chased off to her meeting with her advisor. It didn't seem probable that she'd be able to concentrate on anything or not come across as a babbling idiot. And somehow, here she was.

The college provided both individual advisors and career advisors; fortunately for Joss, hers came two functions in one package. He was a patient older man, kept his finger on the pulse of many academic institutions that might want fresh blood for their research pools or their teaching staff, among other places. He also had one of the most interesting collection of anecdotes Joss had encountered since her last would-be hook up in a cheap dive bar. And he still wasn't holding her attention today. At least he was understanding about it.

She begged off because of medical problems with her boyfriend, which wasn't a lie, and re-scheduled for Wednesday. He wished them both luck as the door closed behind her. Good man.

"I am so screwed for this," she muttered, shouldering her satchel again and heading back across the quad to the bus pick-up. End of semester was one thing, finals and everything, but if she didn't line up a job now she would be in deep trouble once she was out of school. She had a pile of loans to pay off, and she had no intention of sponging off Martine and Alais forever.

Her wallet and keys and headphones were all tangled up in a mess in the front pocket of her satchel, and she should have known better. It was physically impossible to keep headphones from tangling unless they were directly through your fingers or dangling from your ears. She was busy untangling them when she ran into the priest.

"Oh cra-- uh. Excuse me, Father," she apologized. At least, she thought he was a priest. He looked sort of like one, had that same way about him, and she stepped around him with her head lowering back down to charge determinedly along and untangle her head phones so she could tune out the real world on her way home. "Sorry."

"That's quite all right. Could you tell me where the chapel is?"

Joss stopped, looked up and over at the man. "... Sure. It's actually on my way."

It wasn't. Well, it was on the scenic route to the bus stop, but it added maybe two minutes of walking to her time. And there was something about the man that was soothing. Maybe that was why she assumed he was a priest. And she didn't want to hurry back to the hospital almost as much as she did. Conflicting emotions over what would happen there. The priest-shaped person smiled, thanked her. She managed a smile back, but when they started walking again her head dropped, shoulders hunched, bracing against the wind or the storm or the next big thing to come out of nowhere and sandbag her.

The priest kept looking at her sideways, she could tell. "Excuse me... and, please forgive me if I'm presuming, but. You don't look very well."

"Well, that's probably ... because I'm not." That came out after a hard swallow and a moment to search through her brain for something that wasn't either snappish or emo or both. They walked under the canopy of trees lining either side of the path, and when they came out the other side it was gray and smelled of rain.

"It's..." Joss took a breath, meaning to say something, but the words didn't come when she let it out again. "A friend of mine. My boyfriend. He's not doing so good, he's going to the hospital today for some more tests..."

He made the usual noises and polite phrases, quietly, she thought, in case she had more to say.

"And it's probably nothing. I'm pretty sure it's nothing, or at least, the same nothing that's been bothering him as long as I've known him. He's been through doctors and specialists and no one seems to be able to say what's wrong with him. Or if they have half a clue, they're damn well not saying it... no offense."

"None taken."

"And Alais, that's his other girlfriend... we sort of share him. It's a normal ..." Probably not by his standards, she realized as she said it. "Polygamous relationship, everyone's ... fine. Anyway, Alais is in France now, or she was, and I think she's coming down with something so if he winds up in the hospital she won't be able to help. And I hate hospitals. I hate them. They stink, and they're full of old people and sick people and, I mean, not that I really mind old people or sick people? But it's like, it reminds you that you're going to be sick and dying one day. Or something like that, I don't know..." Her head was starting to hurt again. And she wasn't proud of the fact that she sounded like she was whining. Her fingertips pressed to her temple for a second and she stomped down the surge of fear and bile that came out of nowhere.

"I don't like it. Any of it. Everything that's happened in the last couple of days has been something that's either stressful, or worrying, or both. And I don't want that right now. And I don't want... that kind of responsibility." That came with having Martine in the hospital. "Usually that's Alais's thing. I can make sure he takes his medication on time and make sure he eats and drinks, but when it comes to serious medical stuff, I don't know anything about that."

"But that's not all, is it," he asked quietly. He hadn't pressed her on the non-monogamy, at least. And he hadn't commented on the whining, or her refusal to take responsibility like a true friend would. "You would be able to handle it if all it was, was practical things."

"I guess..." Not that she wanted to outright agree with him. But it felt true, his words knocked against something in her chest that said, yes. This is true. "It's the dreams, mostly. I haven't been sleeping at night, and I think I've started dreaming during the day. Or hallucinating."

"What sorts of dreams?" And then, off her look askance at him. "Whether or not you subscribe to all the points of dream theory, they at least come from your own mind and are worth considering as to their effect."

He sounded like a shrink. "Dreams about... birds, I guess. I keep feeling like I'm hearing birds everywhere, like I'm by the ocean or something. And there was this dream I had where I was... pregnant. With a baby, a real baby, only I was talking to a friend and flies came out of his mouth, and they started biting me. And they chewed open my stomach, and the baby came out. And I had to protect the baby..." Her arms curled around her stomach, shoulders bent forward. Whether to protect her dream or because she felt like she was going to throw up, she didn't know. "I had to protect the baby, but they were eating me alive. It really felt like I was being eaten alive..."

Joss straightened up and looked around after a second, after she'd taken two steps and realized the priest had gone silent. And now she also realized, a little more, how surreal the whole conversation had been. If this were a movie, he'd be gone. He was gone, the first time she looked, a flock of birds startling upwards and wheeling around. But then they landed again and she realized, no, he hadn't gone. He'd just wandered behind a tree and now he had come out the other side. The birds had lifted off and wheeled because he was feeding them.

"Face it, Joss, you're going batshit insane," she muttered, and picked up into a run to catch her bus.

It was the kind of clean that reeked of not having been lived in for weeks at a time. Joss spent so little time in here she almost forgot what it looked like, anymore.

After missing the bus, though, it was easier than finding a lounge or a library room where she wouldn't be disturbed by a passing student or the noise from some other class. She stood in the center of the tiny single room and looked around. Standard issue dorm carpeting, single desk, single chair, single short bookshelf, single dresser. Single bed. Single closet with a couple of jackets she never wore hanging in it. Single change of clothes in the top drawer of the dresser, just in case.

What would it look like if she decided not to go back to Martine's? If she moved into the dorm for the last little while of school she had left. Apart from the fact that she would probably be so busy aching and crying or studying to get away from it to notice what it looked like, messy. She had far too much stuff to cram into a tiny dorm room, had expanded to pretty much fill one third of the apartment that was considerably bigger. She had cooking stuff there, videos, way too many clothes. Things.

Joss put her hand to her forehead in the manner of a Victorian tragedienne and tried to rub the headache away, scrunching up her forehead and then curling her fingers and raking them through her hair. It felt really strange not going over to his place. She was already going to miss the next bus, and there were only a couple more, so she should just be heading over to the stop and waiting for the next one, even if it took about half an hour. Instead she was shucking off her shoes, socks, and jeans, and crawling up onto her bed that was still made from when she'd first arrived on campus this year, with spare sheets from the apartment. Putting her back against the wall and curling up with her pillow against her stomach, knees tucked up in front of that.

"This is stupid, Joss," she told herself. "Alais will be here tomorrow, no, later tonight. Tomorrow morning?" She couldn't remember. It bugged her that she couldn't remember. Then again, right now everything connected with the head, the mind, the memory was going to bug her. "Christ, you'd probably think that you needed to go to the hospital if you got a stress headache."

Paying attention to her body had become a lot more of a thing when she'd started dating Martine. Maybe because she figured he should pay so much close attention to his. It had taken her a while to stop being paranoid about everything.

And now, it seemed like they were right back to it. Or she was, at least. Her stomach twisted and turned, nausea creeping up on her at the thought of all that could be going wrong while she wasn't there, all that might have happened or could happen. Martine, reduced to a lifeless and drooling shell of the person he had been because of some wasting disease, and she'd be stuck taking care of him. She could hear her mother clucking and scolding her now about how that wasn't fair. And probably condemning her choice to be with a man who already was with another woman in the first place. Their immoral lifestyles. She couldn't bring herself to think that God was smiting Martine because of his, Alais, Joss, and Paula's decisions to all be happy together. Sort of.

"This is stupid," she repeated.

And then the nausea peaked and propelled her out of her bed, into the hallway (in her t-shirt and panties, no less) and from there into the bathroom where she was promptly sick and shaking over the toilet.

Martine scrubbed a hand over his face, the cold water doing nothing to help either his mood or his queasiness. The queasiness, at least, he figured was brought on by the headache. The headache was brought on by lack of sleep, and he didn't want to go to sleep right now. Not with those kinds of dreams.

Alais would be home soon. He didn't know where Joss was, but he hoped she was at the school. After their last fight he hadn't wanted to call her in case she didn't want to hear from him, figured giving her space was what she wanted. Some room to breathe.

He scrubbed at his face one last time and turned the bathroom light off, went to curl up in the bed. Sleep wasn't coming, not quickly.

Maybe he'd have those dreams of peeling off his face again and being someone, something else underneath. He'd had quite a few of those. Sometimes, the worst times there was no one underneath, and when he looked in the mirror all he saw was a black nothingness that gave him headaches to even think about and sent him shaking into wakefulness. It was the kind of thing that seemed ridiculous or silly right up until it happened to you. And then it became time for shaking and crying under a cold shower because all the hot water was used up in scalding himself out of the nightmare.

Martine twitched awake again. He'd fallen asleep and he hadn't realized it.

"Mmph. Joss...?"

No, Joss wasn't there. Except, there was someone there. A shape at the foot of the bed, a woman's shape, curves in black against the light of the kitchen. He hadn't left the light on, so she must have turned it on.

"Alais. I thought you weren't due back until..." she climbed into bed with him, and he scooted over to make room. Except it wasn't Alais, it was Joss. Eyes downcast, silent.

Martine stopped moving as she lifted the covers and slipped beneath, one elbow dug into the pillow, one hand still curled into the sheet and clenching slowly. The headache was starting to pulse between his eyes, now. There was a wrongness to this that made his skin itch and the prickling behind his eyes get worse, his mouth twisting. This was fundamentally wrong, at the heart of it there was something that wasn't as it should be, the way she moved, the way she looked. The tint of her skin in the light from the kitchen and the moonlight coming through, he wasn't sure what it was but it was the same kind of wrongness that he felt when he saw that black emptiness where his face should be and it made him launch himself out of the bed and stagger towards the bathroom to throw up again.

"What..." Bile coated his mouth, and every time he moved it to speak it shifted and coated his tongue again. "Wh-what. What are you?"

The woman-shape came up out of the bed slowly, the way Joss might have done if he'd woken her up with one of his nightmares or headaches or something. Except he didn't wake her up. Alais did, but she usually just sat up and watched him to make sure it wasn't anything serious. And this shape was walking towards him, with a purpose.

And then it leaned in the doorway and did nothing. He could see the curve of hip and side under his arm when he dropped his head again, but he didn't want to look. Either up or into the mirror. If this was real, he didn't want to know, and if this was a dream he didn't want to see the nothing again. And his head was killing him.

"Go away," he muttered. "Go away and leave me alone."

He should have stayed silent. The figure came closer to him, towards him, and out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of movement and realised it was reaching for him. Mirror be damned, he spun around and backed up until his heel hit the tub and he went flattening against the shower curtain, then into the old ceramic and metal thing. His ass hit the bottom and his head hit the side and he saw her bending over him and reaching to put one hand on the side of his face, but he still couldn't see her face until he jerked sideways and fell into bed again.

Not quite fell. That strange dizzying sensation like falling and hitting the bottom suddenly, only already on the mattress. He blinked his eyes a couple of times to clear the tears and sweat.

"Fu--" He didn't dare move for fear of provoking another splitting headache, but it seemed to have gone with the nightmare. And now he couldn't tell whether he'd been dreaming when he'd gone to shower and scrub off or not. "Dammit."

Another few minutes and pulling the pillow over his head, facedown in the bed seemed to be called for. He closed his eyes tight and pretended he wasn't crying, terrified of being alone at night for the first time in what felt like ages.

The airport was big, and it echoed. Joss kept her sunglasses on even in the terminal; it was brightly lit enough for her not to need them and she didn't want the lack of sleep to make people start giving her pamphlets for battered women. "Seriously, folks," she muttered to no one in particular. "Sometimes red eyes just mean a lack of sleep, not crying."

Though she had been crying. Not because of domestic abuse, but because of staying up late and being stressed and spending her first night alone in her dorm room bed in a while. Had she ever done that? She couldn't remember, and she didn't really want to think about it much longer. Alais's flight would get in soon. Maybe Martine would pick her up, but with what had been happening with him lately Joss hoped he had the sense not to get behind the wheel of a car. And anyway, that was why she was here, right? To stop them from doing anything stupid and to make sure Alais had someone to pick her up from the airport.

Like maybe Paula.

Joss rolled her eyes at herself and sighed, digging around in her purse for her phone. She didn't know Paula's number by heart, but it would make sense that Alais had called her. Why had she forgotten that? How long had she been part of this unconventional arrangement, a couple years, at least. Communication was key, she knew that. And forgot.

Her phone rang just as she was starting to dial Paula's number, and she yelped and almost dropped it. "Oh christ." Her mother. "Hi, mami."

"Jocelyn, where have you been? That boy of yours called the house twice looking for you!"

She couldn't tell if her mother was more upset that she'd been unaccounted for or that Martine had called the house. Either way, it didn't sound like this was going to go well. "I was at school, mami. You know, like I'm supposed to be doing? I didn't feel well so I just crashed in my room after I missed the first couple of buses, that's all."

"And you couldn't call and tell someone? I've been worried sick about you, and I expect if he's any sort of a boyfriend..."

Oh, here it was.

"... he has, too. You know, I still don't think that, if he really cared about you, he would be seeing this other girl..."

"Mami!"

She could hear her mother snorting and throwing her hands up in the air. Or maybe wiping them on a dish cloth if she was in the kitchen. Something like that, an exasperated gesture. "Well, whatever. I wash my hands of it." And then, of course, she started muttering in Spanish, indicating a severe lack of washed hands.

Joss held the phone away from her head for a while as her mother ranted. "Mami. Mami. _Callate su boca, por favor!_ " All right, so politeness wasn't going to be her strong suit for this conversation. She was worried.

"I did not raise you to talk to your mami that way!"

"Mami, I'm at the airport, I'm picking up Alais, we're going to take Martine to the hospital..." That wasn't strictly true, but she figured it might well be true in a few hours from then, so she said it anyway. "So can we please not do this right now?"

" _Madre de_... What happened to him?"

Joss sighed, flopping down onto a bench and wondering if she should be glad she didn't get to walk all the way to the gate anymore. "I don't know. He's had a couple of bad spells. He passed out in the middle of the mall yesterday when we were getting a dress for my graduation..." She waited for her mother to say something about parties or celebrations and was pleasantly surprised when nothing came. "... and then later sometime late last night... the night before. Something, I don't know, anyway, late the other night it's like he... lost his words."

Incredulous. "Lost his words?"

"His words, like he forgot how to speak, or when it came out it was all garbled. And he couldn't understand what I was saying, either. The doctor said it was a form of..."

"Aphasia."

She blinked. "You've heard of it?"

"There was a doctor at the hospital where your papi worked, rest his soul. At the end when he had his strokes, the doctor said there was no real treatment for it, that it had to be dealt with individually."

Of course, her father hadn't lived long enough for them to treat him for much of anything, but... Joss frowned. "I thought he lost, you know. I thought he lost the ability to speak..."

"He didn't want you to hear him like that, _querida_ , would you have?" And again, Joss waited for the dig about her having children and it still didn't come. "There are treatments for it, I have his card here somewhere, still..."

She heard her mother rummaging around the kitchen over the announcement saying something about a flight in from France, no flight number given. "Mami, mami..." Dammit. She didn't want to miss Alais. And it was too much to take in all at once, her father, Martine, all of it swirling around in her head. Too much information. "It's okay, I'll come by later, I'll pick up the card, he's better now anyway."

"Better? Honey, what do you mean..."

"I have to go," Joss said, "I love you," and hung up. It wasn't the bravest thing she could have done, but Alais was heading towards her now and she didn't see Paula around, so the older woman must have been meaning to get a cab to the apartment. She waved Alais over and threw her arms around her, clinging tight and about to cry. She'd been fine a second ago.

"Hey, hey now, _cherie_ , it's okay. It's going to be okay." Alais's bags slid down to the ground and for a second they hugged each other, clung tight, fingers bunching up shirts and hair sticking to their mouths.

Joss blinked a couple of times. She wasn't going to cry. She damn well wasn't going to cry because if she fell apart now, she didn't know if she'd be able to put herself back together very quickly. "Come on," she mumbled, grabbing Alais's overnight bag and letting her grab her purse. "Let's get back to the apartment."

Neither of them spoke on the way there; neither of them were sure of what they'd find. And both of them were tense, Alais gripping her purse as though she were afraid someone would rip it out of her hands and Joss kept her fist curled around the door handle.

They held hands as they walked up to the apartment, gripping each other both too tightly to complain. Joss had to let go of Alais's hand long enough to fumble out her keys and not drop them; her palm felt sweaty and it made her fingers slip over the key ring. The apartment inside was air-conditioned, as usual. A thought flickered through her head that it was a wonder she didn't get sick from the temperature change, then she realized that the fever pouring through her body was her own tension, not the outside heat.

"Martine?" Alais called. Her accent made some letters slur and others sharper, the 't' clipping off her tongue. "Martine, where..."

He came stumbling out of the bedroom and both women ran to him, colliding shoulders before they divided and went each to a side. "It's all right," he grumbled. "It's all right, it's just the nightmares. Lack of sleep headache."

"All right?" Alais's voice shrilled right next to both of their ears, and Martine managed to escape knocking his head into Joss's only because she flinched away too. "All right? You fainted! And then you lost all powers of language, unless there is someone in this world who could tell what you were speaking and speak it back to you. That is not fine! That is ..."

"That's sick, Martine. That's the symptoms of illness." Joss's fists were dug into her hips, though she shifted her hands to clasped behind her back after a second. "And with what you already have, we don't want to take any chances. We care about you."

Alais's eyes flickered to her, and Joss felt a little guilty for taking the even and calm tone while the older woman was flipping out. Except, she was too tired for flipping out. She'd spent the last few days taking care of herself, taking care of Martine, and trying to keep her head above water at school. Between everything, she was exhausted, and she didn't have the energy to maintain a good head of mad at the man.

"I've seen the doctor," Martine told them both dully, stretching out on the couch and tucking his feet under the middle cushion. "He couldn't tell me anything. None of them could tell me anything."

"You don't know that. You do not know that!" Alais yelled. Joss winced. Martine winced, more likely at the noise than anything else but the tone was not pleasant either. Alais got shrill when she got mad.

Joss went over and stood behind Martine, rubbing his shoulders out of habit rather than any need to comfort either of them. "We did manage to get him to the doctor, but they didn't do many tests. I don't think they wanted to do very many tests without having an idea of what's going on."

"But isn't the purpose of conducting those tests to find out what's going on? I can't believe you didn't insist on at least an MRI, a CT scan, some sort of... brain imaging... thingie!"

She had to resist the urge to giggle. Alais's accent was still clinging to her despite her being back in the States, possibly because of stress, and the sound of her saying 'thingie' in a somewhat Parisian French accent was hilarious. Or maybe it was just the lack of sleep making her think that.

"I'm fine, Alais," he snapped, dragging one of the cushions around and hugging it to his chest. "I can speak, I haven't fainted again. I'm fine."

"You are not fine. You haven't been fine since I met you, and this brain thing of yours, whatever it is that's giving you these headaches, all this sensitivity, it's getting worse. And worse. And with all of the opportunities available to us today, all you can do is sit there and take painkillers and ignore it until it goes away?"

"Alais, what do you want..."

"Shut up," Joss said quietly, but they were both talking over her.

"... me to do? Go in there and say I have something affecting my brain but I don't know what it is? Tell them I want more tests and more scans but I don't know what I need? They're not going to listen to me if I tell them that. They will think I'm a hypochondriac, and they will send me away with a prescription for painkillers and a note in my file that I may be a drug addict..."

Alais almost talked over him, loud and angry. "No, you're supposed to give them a list of your symptoms. How long they've been going on, what you ate and drank, everything that could be causing them and it is _their_ job to diagnose you, or to present you with a list of things to look for, things to maybe do..."

"Shut! Up!"

Both of them stared at her. She'd stopped rubbing his shoulders by now and was about ready to hit one or the other of them and, standing there with her fists clenched at her sides, she probably painted a pretty strange picture. No wonder they were staring.

"Shut up," she breathed. "The both of you, shut up. We are going to the hospital. This is not up for debate. We are going to the hospital. We are going to tell the doctor what has happened, because Alais is right. We are going to give them a list of our usual diets, our habits, where we've been and what we've been around. And we are going to have a rational, logical discussion with the doctors, hopefully with a specialist, about what we should be doing to try and come to a more specific diagnosis. And then," Joss glanced at Alais. "We will come home, and we will try to be normal."

"You don't thi..." Alais started, and Joss hurled a pillow at her head.

They both stared at each other. Joss didn't know what had just happened, it was as though someone else had used her arms to pick up the pillow and throw it. Alais was just as shocked as she was. Martine had ducked, being in the middle of them, and was now staring between them like, well. Like any man caught between two fighting women might.

"There isn't anything else we can do," Joss said after a second. Her voice was strangled and hoarse. She should probably have some water before they left. "We can't demand scans and subject him to treatments because we want to take a shot in the dark. We have to trust that the doctors know what they're doing."

Alais clearly wasn't up to trusting much of anyone right now, least of all some strange doctor. But after a moment, to Joss's surprise and relief, she nodded. "I guess... you're right. There isn't anything else we can do."

"Good." Joss exhaled. "Now, can we _please_ go down to the car?"

Barely five minutes in and she remembered specifically where her aversion to hospitals had come from. The smell invaded her nostrils, all the muted sounds and happy or bland colors. Nothing normal, no in-between. It brought back memories she'd rather have left to the background. Thoughts she hadn't had in years. Bad enough to be going to the hospital herself for whatever reasons, worse still to be escorting someone she loved and cared about to the hospital for treatments unknown due to causes unknown, and then having to sit around and wait and think about what was going on.

"That's all this hospital is," she muttered. "One giant waiting room."

Behind the privacy curtain she heard Martine chuckle, and the rustle of fabric as he got dressed again.

Alais had gone to call Paula and give her an update on the situation. With luck, Joss thought, Paula would come drive her home. Either to their home or to Martine's, either way, but Alais was turning slightly hysterical and Joss hadn't expected that, she'd been hoping for a source of support from her friend. And what she'd gotten instead was someone else she had to support. _And when is it my turn to be the fucking mess?_

And in the next moment she shook her head, feeling bad for feeling resentful. Alais probably had a lot on her plate, too. Come to think of it, she was the only one with only one significant other, here. She didn't know how that was significant but it probably meant something.

Martine came out from behind the privacy shield, jeans and hooded sweatshirt again. Hands stuffed into his pockets. "Hey."

"Hey." She tucked her arm into his and pulled him close, leaning against his shoulder. His sweatshirt was soft from years of wearing and smelled like him underneath all the hospital smell of gauze and medical tape and plastic. "How're you holding up?"

"Shouldn't I be asking you that?" he smiled. "No headaches yet. I mean, that's what happens, right? You go to the doctor and you feel totally fine, even though five seconds ago in the car you felt like death warmed over."

For some reason that gave her an image of a tiny grim reaper in a microwave, going all limp and wilted like heated lettuce. She giggled.

He put an arm around her shoulders. "Hey. Maybe it's just bad brain chemistry, you know? Something they can give you medications for..."

"Electroshock therapy," she muttered.

"Or that. Kidding!" he raised his hands and stepped back as she aimed a punch at him. "I'm kidding. If I wanted electroshock therapy I'd give you a taser."

"You wouldn't know where to get a taser, let alone give me one," Joss retorted. The words sounded scrambled in her head, let alone when they came out of her mouth. "Anyway, what if it's not bad brain chemistry? What if it's a tumor or something?"

"It's not..."

"Don't. Even."

Martine pouted. Joss could only resist that for so long before her lips twitched and she started to laugh again. He had the worst cartoon imitations, any cartoon. It was as though if it weren't live, he couldn't understand it, at least not on a basic level enough to imitate it. But there was still something kind of nice that he'd tried, for her.

She looked up at him to tell him so but he wasn't looking at her anymore. He was looking at the wall opposite, studying body charts and a diagram of a healthy and a smoker's lung exhorting them not to smoke. Or something, maybe he was looking at the room beyond that, he couldn't tell. He was distant, distracted. She leaned in further into his side and nudged his rib with her elbow. "Hey. Earth to..."

"Martine?"

That would be the doctor, then. White coat, clipboard, officious manner, reeking of latex and plastic and cleaners. Joss untangled herself from Martine's side and half-hid behind him.

"Yes?"

The doctor sat them both down, though he was turned to and spoke mostly to Martine. "We've gone over your records, and we'd like you to start keeping a diary again... yes, again, for the next couple of weeks. Pretty much what you've been giving us, but if you keep it as you go along it may help us determine what's going on with you. It seems most likely to be something environmental, but we'd like to take some basic scans just to rule out a coronary event."

Joss looked over at him. He looked over at her with a faint frown. She nodded, in case he was waiting for her to say yes or encourage him or something like that.

"All right," he said, albeit somewhat slowly.

"All right," the doctor said, standing. "I'll have them prep the room, and then I'll be back in to go over that journal with you in some more detail."

Prep the machine. Martine snorted inwardly; the machine knew damn well what it was doing. He was the one who had no clue what was going on here.

They'd explained things to him but most of the explanations were in doctor-speak, not English. They'd pulled his chart and they'd gone over his previous scans with him, talking half to him and half to each other about what might have caused the further two incidents, as everyone seemed to want to call it. Episodes, incidents. Big long words that meant afternoons or evenings of insanity for him and Joss and all of it reduced to a multi-syllable word.

"Are you allergic to shellfish?"

What the hell kind of a dumbass question was that, anyway?

And now he was in a small tube that looked like something out of a Stanley Kubrick movie, listening to people talk in muffled voices beyond plexiglass walls and waiting for the noise to start.

One thing he remembered from the last time, these machines were big. They were big and they were loud. They were big, loud, and it was a miracle they didn't give him a headache just with the way they had him lying perfectly still while big bass drums went off all around his head. And the lights that were white and blue-white and flashing. And the shadows. He wasn't sure what was worse, the lights or the shadows.

It was disorienting. It was all far too disorienting. He didn't like hospitals, he didn't like all their technology and their scanners that could either tell you what was going wrong in your body or screw you up worse than you thought was possible, and he didn't like this damn tube they'd stuck him in. Joss and Alais had both said it was probably necessary, and he could see why they'd think that. Taking pictures of his brain to figure out what was wrong with his brain, that part was logical.

"Do you have any tattoos?"

What the hell did that have to do with anything?

The machine was getting louder. Maybe it was only in his head. But it felt as though it was getting louder, it felt as though it was lifting him up and tilting him back and forth and sideways, like a kid on a carnival ride.

"Stop," he managed to gasp. They were on the other side of the glass, listening for signs of trouble, weren't they? They should be able to hear him. "Please, stop... I feel sick."

Dizzy. He felt sick and dizzy and nauseous, but even if he turned his head to throw up it'd just roll up the side of the tube and back onto his face and that thought made him even more nauseous. Back and forth and up and down. It wasn't really moving, it couldn't be moving, it was a giant fucking machine bolted to the floor and yet he felt like it was. Shaking him around and preparing to spit him back out again. And it was louder. Or at least it felt louder. The thump thump thumps of the machine rocked his skull.

"Stop... Stop!"

He thought he saw a light come on out of the corner of his eye. "Just another minute," a voice said, a male intercom voice generic to most intercom voices, everyone sounding alike through the electronic distortion. "We're almost done."

"No..." Martine whispered. He didn't have the energy to project any further. Or the urge to open his mouth and shout, not when he wasn't sure what would come out of it. "No, no no no..."

The lights started to flicker. That part wasn't his imagination, he knew, he knew this because the doctors in the other room were mumbling louder and sounding more agitated. Power flickering. Lights flickering. The thumping was fading but the fact that the machine was actually _malfunctioning_ wasn't helping his panic any and when where they going to get him out of here?

"Stop! Stop this damn mach--"

And that was when everything went dark.

They had him bundled up in a hospital bed almost before he could think, let alone say words. His teeth were chattering. Shock, they said, was making him feel cold, but all he could feel was the gap between him and everyone else around him. Men and women in white coats and multi-colored scrubs with charts and probes and bright lights shining in his eyes. He kept telling them he was fine, that he was all right, he didn't even have a headache, he was just going to go home. They kept talking about disorientation, presenting with a long list of symptoms not all of which made any sense, detachment.

When he woke up again he didn't remember being sedated. Alais was sitting next to him, and Joss was standing at a little distance apart with her arms wrapped around her chest, fuming. She had on that expression like she wanted to kill someone that usually meant her English was slipping into her Spanish and anything he got out of her was likely to be incoherent.

"What happened?" His mouth felt dry. His tongue felt like a swollen, wet sock.

Alais's fingertip trailed along the back of his hand from middle finger to wrist. "You were hysterical. They had to sedate you to get you to stay in bed. They wanted to be sure the panic attack... that's what they said it was... that you had in the MRI machine didn't ..." She gave up on making any of it sound rational, or it sounded that way.

"They said you were having a panic attack, but that wasn't what it looked like. I don't know what's going on, but I don't think they're going to be much..." Alais's grip was tightening on his hand, and he winced. Joss stepped forward at that.

"...help. With whatever this is, Alais..."

The younger woman took her friend by the shoulders and lifted her away from Martine, peeling her hand off of his and steering her towards the door. "I was ..."

"Why don't you go get yourself calmed down, first," Joss suggested. "Splash some cold water on your face, we'll be here when you get out."

Alais didn't object. Martine didn't know if that was because it was a good idea or because she was too exhausted to say anything. Which meant that it was probably a good idea in the first place.

Joss came down to sit by him, though, after Alais had gone to the bathroom, for which he was so grateful he could barely sit up straight. She put an arm around his shoulders and let him lean his head on her breasts, which would have been embarrassing under any other circumstance, he was sure. At least for her.

"I think I know ..." she started, then he felt her hair slip back and forth over his face as she shook her head. "Okay, I don't know why what happened, happened, but I think I do know what happened? At least your part of it."

She combed her fingers through his hair, watching as the strands mingled dark red-brown on darker brown, and explained her theory of his claustrophobia and his resistance to new experiences. To change. "Not knowing what happened in the first place..."

"Would make you more resistant to finding out what is happening now, even if it's only in your subconscious." Joss leaned over and placed a deliberate, over-the-top smooch on the top of his head. "It's not the first time you've been in the damn thing, after all. But it's the first time with us panicking at you, after everything that's happened..."

He shivered. Hugged her harder, tighter, around her waist, till he felt her tensing against his grip and she started to squirm. "Sorry..." he loosened his arms. "Sorry, I'm sorry..."

"It's all right..." she whispered. "I just..."

If there was more to that, she either wasn't saying it or couldn't make it come out quite right. He was back to shaking again, whether from cold or from fear he couldn't tell, and his thoughts were all piling up one against the other and stuttering around themselves. Like sparks in a wildfire. Alais came back into the room and looked between the two of them, a dark and ugly look, but she didn't say anything. He cringed a little further into Joss despite knowing he shouldn't; there was nothing to be ashamed of. She looked very angry. Or upset. Maybe just upset, the hospital had been upsetting.

"No more hospital for today," Joss said finally, extricating herself from him and getting to her feet. "We've had enough hospital, and they didn't get any usable scans, and anyway they'll have to get someone in to repair the machine."

"They've done enough damage," Alais snapped. She'd gone from distraught to angry quicker even than either one of them had changed moods, and both Martine and Joss exchanged a look while she collected her things and jammed them into her purse.

Joss helped him sit up further, then hovered by his arm while he lurched off the bed and jammed his feet into sneakers. They'd at least let him put on his old sweats, or dressed him in them, his mind was a bit foggy on exactly when that had happened. Alais got her things together, his emergency medical paperwork, and took several deep breaths as she turned to watch them. Deep and slow breaths. If everyone could just calm down, that would be fantastic.

And it amazed him, sort of, that a part of him could be this calm and this clear-thinking while the past few days' events kept crashing over his mind and toppling every form of balance he tried to achieve. Normal routine seemed so very far away.

"No more hospitals," Joss repeated, taking him on one side while Alais burrowed under the other. This, at least, was back to normal routine. "At least not for a little while. Not till we can figure out for ourselves what's going on."

Martine nodded, and managed a weak version of a grateful smile as they tottered over to the desk to sign the forms and get him out of there.

Joss had no idea what was going on with Alais, but she was sick of it already.

Alais had been fine, too, right up until the incident at the hospital when all the lights had blown and the MRI machine had broken down with Martine somewhat stuck inside. And yes, it had been pretty scary. But nothing had happened that required doctors to fix, only a few engineering problems. Blown transformer, overloaded fuses, something for the electricians and the programmers and the techs.

Martine's panic subsided the closer they got to the apartment. He still clutched at Joss's hand somewhat, or Alais's, but his breathing was easier and now and again his head would loll back and to the side as he fought off exhaustion. Alais stared out of the window of the car and said nothing.

It made for a less than comfortable ride home.

"All right, sleeping beauty," Joss muttered, taking Martine by the shoulders again and steering him into the bedroom. "You're going to lie down for at least a few hours. And drink at least several glasses of water when you wake up. Drink till you slosh," she told him, as one of her math and test prep teachers had told her. A pretty disgusting image, but also pretty good for impressing upon people the need to stay hydrated.

Martine made some kind of noise that Joss translated to 'yes, if you remind me' and planted himself in the bed. She waited until his body had relaxed into sleep before tucking him in.

Joss grabbed Alais by the arm the second she came out of the bedroom and shoved the other woman down onto the couch. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Alais looked up at her as though Joss had interrupted her at the crossword or a sudoku puzzle. "Me? Nothing's wrong with me. I'm quite perfectly fine."

"Fine? You're fine." Joss had to remember to keep her voice down, and not hit Alais. She did call her a few choice things in Spanish, while Alais rolled her eyes at her.

"We're all fine, you know. Despite that little incident in the hospital. You can stop fussing now." One hand flapped at Joss before Alais shifted sideways to stretch out over the couch, her hair fanning out over the pillow like an underwater shot in a bad fantasy movie.

Joss stared. "I don't believe you. Martine freaked out in there, he is not fine, no..." All right, it might be an exaggeration to say that no one here was fine when clearly Alais was the picture of calm and stability, but she wanted to say that. She wanted to believe that this was some sort of backlash to what had happened over the past few days. "I'm not fine. He's not fine. And how you can be fine in the middle of all this, when we don't even know what's wrong..."

"You're so dramatic. We know what's wrong. His body's falling apart."

Alais rolled her eyes up at Joss, who stared at her. It wasn't that her assessment was untrue, or even unlikely. Joss had half thought of it herself, it was just that she'd never heard anyone in their little group speak about it with that kind of bluntness.

And now she knew why. Her mouth went dry, hands twisting at her sides and then clenching into fists, as though whatever was wrong was something she could fight. She crossed her arms over her stomach in self-defense. Alais's eyes followed the movement of her fists for a second and then looked back up at her, a kind of sad or lost or scared expression that Joss couldn't reconcile with her words.

"You don't know that," she said, when she could think of something to say again. "You don't know that that's true. You don't know ..."

"I've seen enough," Alais dismissed her words with a snap and a turn of the head. "If that didn't snap him out of it, nothing will. He should have recovered long before this, and he hasn't. I suppose not everyone can be saved..."

"I've heard enough out of you," Joss snapped back, turning and storming into the bedroom. She didn't slam the door behind her with Martine sleeping, but she did indulge in one of the angriest disrobings she'd ever managed without actually tearing her clothes. Tears, her first tears in some days, welled up in her eyes squinched shut tight with anger. Behind her, in the living room, she could hear Alais shifting on the couch.

Maybe it made sense that Alais could be so cruel, maybe it was a coping mechanism. But if that were the case, it wasn't one Joss liked much, and it wasn't one she'd ever seen before. Alais had known Martine for at least a year even before she had. She shouldn't need this kind of coping mechanism, should she?

Joss slid under the sheets, rolling Martine over. He hadn't had a headache, she thought, in maybe thirty six hours by now. Not a really bad one, at least. Panic attacks and other kinds of anxiety but no headaches. It made her a little less worried as she snuggled up against him, wrapped her arm around his waist, though she still double-checked to make sure that he was still breathing and sleeping peacefully before she bothered to close her eyes. She counted by fives to even out her own breaths, to make herself focus on anything but how upset she was and drag her thoughts out of the realm of throttling Alais, or hitting her with pillows or something.

Footsteps padded into the room. Maybe Alais was coming to apologize, but any other theories weren't swimming to the top of her sleepy brain and she wasn't ready to talk to the other woman just yet. Joss made some kind of murmur and opened her eyes to wave or gesture her off or something, she forgot what when she opened her eyes and the blackness that filled Alais's silhouette against the open light of the door frame was so complete it swallowed every thought in her head. It was the kind of yawning emptiness that only existed in nightmares because only the subconscious mind could describe so complete a terror. She had to be dreaming. Joss opened her mouth to scream, reached to shake Martine awake so he could tell her he was dreaming, when the darkness reached out to Martine itself and there were little speckles of light, like dust motes in the moonlight, following its hand. Joss frowned, squinted at it, trying to look sideways so she didn't have to look at the darkness.

And then the darkness looked at her, hissed, and then she was on the other side of the room propped up against the dresser. And there were shadows, living shadows all in the room, and then it was nothing but the shadows.

Joss opened her eyes after the sun had risen, after it had come through the window and was shining on her face through the curtains. It was kind of prophetic, would have made for a very romantic and cinematic moment if he hadn't been scared out of his mind.

He still couldn't remember. His name, his identity, anything, but after the display Alais had put on in the bedroom doorway he had a gut instinct that he wasn't human. Assuming whatever he was had a gut.

"Muh," Joss mumbled, and that was the more immediate problem. He knelt down next to her and brushed her hair away from her eyes so he could see, trying not to move her. Her eyes were open but unfocused, but her pupils matched and were contracting with the light as he passed back and forth through the sunlight, so that was at least something. It was also the extent of what he knew about head injuries. But she was talking, too. Swearing, actually. "Motherfucker."

Martine crooked a smile. "Eloquent."

"What happened?" Joss tried to push herself up against the dresser where she'd been thrown and Martine pressed her gently back down. And then yanked his hands away in case he was pressing down on something broken, but she didn't say anything. "Christ, did Alais throw me into..."

"The dresser, yes, she did. How do you feel?"

She gave him one of her looks. "Like I've been throw into a bigass piece of furniture, how do you think I feel? _Puta._ Help me..."

He glared at her for it, sort of, at least. But if she was going to pull herself to her feet there was only so much he could do to stop her and keep from aggravating any injuries she'd taken. So he helped her, giving her his arms to wrap her hands around and pulling her up. Sort of. He used the momentum to steer her to the bed and she yelped when she landed back on it, eyes wide.

"No, lie down," he told her. "Stay down. You hit your head pretty hard."

"Where's Alais?"

Martine sat down on the floor next to the bed, one hand curled around hers still. He didn't know how to tell her what had happened after she'd passed out. He didn't even know if he believed it, let alone if she would. "She's on the couch in the ... she's passed out. She's been unconscious almost as long as you have."

Joss gave him another minute or two to expand on his story and tried to sit up when he didn't say anything more. He pulled her back down, shaking his head. "What happened, Martine? I know you, you're not telling me everything. And stop trying to avoid me like you are now." Her neck and shoulders twisted till she had forced him to either meet her eyes or let her turn herself into a pretzel. "What happened? Why did I get thrown into a dresser? And what..."

She didn't say it, but by the way she stopped talking he knew she'd seen at least something. And he still didn't look at her when he said it.

"Something... I don't know what. Something was possessing her."

Joss's fingers closed around his shoulder. "Like in Poltergeist."

"The Exorcist. Or..." Small snort. "That new movie, with what's his name. The blond. But, yeah. Yes. Something was in her, I don't know what. It moved out of her, it showed itself and moved out of her and tried to... to do something to me. To pull something out of me."

"Something out of you? You're possessed too?"

One side of his mouth curled downward for a second. "Heh. I don't... I don't know. I don't know what I am, Joss, okay? I don't know what I am. I don't know what's going on, I know... Alais had some kind of dark thing inside her. She picked you up like you were nothing, threw you across the room. She grabbed me, and... it was like this thing. Was pulling me in two, pulling me up out of my body, like... like peeling skin off, you know, when you get sunburned? Except it wasn't just burned skin, it was me. Coming out of my body, and..."

It would have been easier if he could have leaned into her, curled up in her arms and freaked out knowing he was being held and she would know what to do, make it okay. But she was looking at him like he'd finally gone over the edge, and he couldn't really blame her for that. Either because she'd been unconscious or because he was talking about being dragged out of his body, he wasn't sure which was coloring her opinion of him more right now.

"Sorry," he said, after a long and uncomfortable silence. "I don't... sorry."

The next silence was only a little more comfortable. They sat next to each other but touched as little as possible, fiddled with the blankets or their pants legs or the edges of their shirts or whatever else they had to hand but didn't say anything. Martine leaned his head back against the bedside table and closed his eyes and tried to think of some way this wasn't all his fault. The broken MRI machine and the blackout at the hospital that hadn't happened until he'd panicked. Joss flying through the air and hitting the dresser. That wasn't a sound he had wanted to know, and it wasn't one he wanted to remember.

Then again, maybe he'd forget it as easily as he'd forgotten the rest of his life. Which had apparently been very easy to do.

"Does Alais know?"

Martine's head jerked up. "Know what?"

"Anything. Does she know anything about what's going on, does she know anything about what's happening to you, to her...?" Joss's voice was climbing in volume if not in pitch, at least. "Does she know anything? Why is she unconscious?" Now she was settling. Or at least she was sounding more settled. "I thought I was the one who got tossed around the room like a stunt girlfriend."

"She fell over... I don't know what happened. Whatever the thing inside of her was trying to do, it didn't work. At least, I don't think it did? She passed out. I got her on the couch..."

Joss bit her lip and stayed where she was for a second, then threw the covers off and untangled herself from the sheets. "I'm going to go call Paula," she managed, forcing the sentence out in broken chunks of words. "She should know what's going on."

"Wh-what are you going to tell her?"

She stopped with one hand on the doorway, forehead leaning against it, and Martine wondered for a second if they should get her to a hospital. Then he remembered their last experience with hospitals.

"I don't know. I'll think of something."

Joss used the phone in the kitchen, although she was rapidly running out of places in the apartment where she felt comfortable. It wasn't that she didn't believe that Martine believed what he was saying, because she did. And that was the problem. What he was saying was impossible.

Like the way the machine and everything in the hospital had shorted out was impossible. Like the way Alais, a woman barely larger and certainly not stronger than herself, throwing her across the room was impossible. Like the blackness she'd seen. Like a lot of things that had been happening. The so-called dream interpreter, psychic, whatever he'd been. Sam. Who was now starting to seem less like an exile in his own field and more like those kind of shamanistic people who lurked in wait for some weary traveler to deliver a revelation to.

"Come on, Joss, focus." Not a weary traveler. Just an exhausted girlfriend trying to hold their crazy little unit together. Which meant telling the only person now who didn't know how insane things had gotten, exactly how insane things had gotten. She fumbled the phone off its cradle and pushed a few buttons. At least her fingers remembered the number better than her mind could come up with it right now.

Paula picked up quickly. "Alais? Is everything..."

"It's, it's not Alais. It's Joss." Paula was in the kitchen too, by the sound of it. Maybe making something to eat. Joss followed the edge of the kitchen counter over to the fridge and tugged at the handle hard enough to make all the jars in the door rattle. "There's... something's going on. I don't know what."

If she'd been thinking clearly, she would have known better than to say something that ambiguous. Especially with what had brought Alais back so soon, Paula knew there was at least something to be worried about already. "Is Martine all right? Where's Alais, are they at the hospital or..."

"No, no, it's nothing like that. It's..." Thank god for plastic cups, Joss almost dropped it trying to juggle the water pitcher, the phone, and the cup all at once. "I don't know what it is, okay? Something happened when we took Martine to the hospital, and then we came home and she started acting weird, and weird shit kept happening, and I..."

She heard Paula muttering a Hail Mary under her breath. "What kind of weird stuff?" Paula didn't swear. Joss had never heard her swear, anyway.

"Martine shorted out the MRI floor. Not just the machine, the whole _floor_ went black. And then..." This was the part she didn't want to discuss with Paula, but the other woman had a right to know what was happening to her girlfriend. "Alais came into the room while I was napping with Martine. She was... different. Something. There was a kind of darkness around her, I don't mean her attitude, I mean it was like... blackness. Was literally clinging to her."

Paula was silent for a minute or two. "That sounds like it should be... it sounds like she was in a horror movie."

"It looked kind of like she was in a horror movie, except this wasn't CGI, Paula, this was real." Joss's voice was insistent, verging on strident. She didn't know how to explain it to the other woman in a way that didn't sound like she was crazy, and fifteen, twenty, however many minutes it had been later, she wasn't sure she wasn't going insane. Or having some kind of hallucination from the hit to the head, except what she'd seen had come before the hit to the head.

"W-what's happening now?"

She wasn't sure what put the quiver in Paula's voice. Maybe just thinking that Joss was going crazy, or maybe assuming it was real. Paula was more apt to believe in things like that than she was, although Joss wasn't sure what of the Catholic doctrine the other woman followed on possession. Maybe Mama would know what to do. Something to do with a bishop.

"Uh," she'd forgotten to actually answer the question, not good. "I don't know. Martine's in the bedroom, Alais is... she's asleep on the couch." Passed out. She was passed out on the couch, except passed out sounded bad and she wasn't ready to worry Paula just yet.

"Asleep?"

Dammit. "Passed out. I think. I don't know, I was kind of unconscious at the time." Defensive, very defensive, there wasn't any need to snap at Paula.

Who sighed, on the other end of the line, and there was the sound of clattering and fluttering of fabric. "I'll be over in ten... fifteen minutes." That was the sound of keys jingling as they were snatched from the nightstand or somewhere. Joss didn't bother arguing with her.

When she hung up the phone Martine was standing by the kitchen island, watching her. She folded her arms over her chest and tucked her hands against her body, the phone making an uncomfortable lump against her ribs. "You heard that."

"Heard some of it. Enough," he nodded. Took a step towards her, and she would have taken a step back except the counter was pressed into her back already. "Joss..."

She shook her head. If he came any closer she'd pitch the phone at his head, she was sure of it. "Don't... just, don't. I know what I saw."

"I know. You're not going crazy." He didn't step closer, thankfully, and he held up his hands in a gesture of submission or peace or something. "I mean... it's not the best or, heh, the most likely answer? But it does explain some things, doesn't it? That something weird is going, was always going on? The headaches that act like no headaches anyone's heard of and don't respond to, well, anything..."

"That can't be that unusual," she pointed out.

"... the sudden memory loss, not having existed anywhere before ever..."

"You don't know that!" she shouted. "You do not know that! You only think that because you haven't looked, because it's easier to be magical and special than to have some kind of, of condition and be constantly in and out of hospitals! It's easier to think you're some kind of, what, wizard who had a magical experiment blow up in his face? This isn't Harry Fucking Potter!"

"Joss."

Something about the way he said it made her shiver down to her bones. Made her throat close and her arms lower and close tighter around her stomach. She felt, and he had never made her feel like this before, very young and foolish. All of her twenty two years of age, and how little that was compared to so many people.

Martine's face fell. He took a couple steps forward again, and she resisted the urge to scrabble up onto the counter and over the side of the fridge in some sort of weird reverse kitchen parkour. When he put his hands on her shoulders they felt ice cold.

"Hey. Come back to bed, okay? At least..." he stopped, and she finished it for him.

"I shouldn't sleep, not for another twenty four hours."

"Okay, but at least rest, okay? You're not going crazy. I saw it too. And ... whatever else, something weird is going on. We both know it. We'll... we'll figure it out."

She wasn't so sure. She wasn't sure at all, really. But she did let him lead her back to the bedroom, tucking her in with a couple of her textbooks at her request. At least while she had to be awake she could get something useful done.

Paula was there quickly, nodding a greeting at Joss through the doorway but settling down on the couch next to her lover and checking her over as best as she could manage, probably. None of them were medical professionals. Martine was probably most knowledgeable among them just from having been in similar situations so many times, but if this lasted much longer they should talk to a doctor.

 _About what? About demonic possession? Talk to Mom's priest._ Joss shook her head, went back to her textbooks. Wandered out into the living room again after half an hour. Martine was sitting perched in the armchair, spread over as much of it as he could comfortably and unoffensively manage. Paula was sitting with her back to him, hunched over and tense, next to Alais. It was one of the more awkward moments she'd seen since they'd arrived at this particular relationship configuration.

"All right," she said, going over to the coat closet and grabbing Martine's jacket, which she then dropped over his head. "We're going out for coffee. If I have to be up for the next twenty four hours, I'm going to need a lot of coffee."

What she really needed was normal. More normal, more of her normal life, something to get her feet back on the ground after she'd spent the past however long in weirdsville. She grabbed her phone and started texting Dale, asking him if he could meet her and Martine for coffee. That would be a start, anyway. Having Martine around was less than ideal as far as normalcy went, but he couldn't do much if they were just going for coffee, could he? And she wasn't willing to leave him alone with Alais anymore. Not after what had happened.

"How long..." Paula looked up at her as she wandered around making sure she had everything, then double-checking. The way everyone's minds had been lately, she wouldn't be surprised if she forgot something like keys or wallet or her cell phone.

"We won't be out long. An hour or two, Martine still..."

Needed to take his meds. But if he was something strange, something weird that could be pulled out of a body or whatever, would medications even help? Was there any point to taking them?

"We'll be back soon, Paula." Martine set down his water glass and came over by Joss. She looked up at him, wondering if this really was the best idea, right now. His lips were dry and cracked and he looked exhausted.

He still laid a hand on Paula's shoulder for a second as he passed, and Joss wasn't sure that was the best idea, either. The other woman flinched away.

"Come on," Joss beckoned. "Let's go out for a bit."

The Beanery wasn't far from the campus, but far enough to make it only the third-favorite hangout of students looking for their hot caffeine fix. Joss preferred it that way, didn't want to explain to too many people what was going on and why she looked like death warmed over, and Dale at least wouldn't ask too many questions.

"You look like hammered shit," was his first comment. Joss gave him a flat stare.

"Thanks. You look like roadkill. Lose a game too many?"

Dale didn't take it hard, he was one of the most easy-going people she knew. Another reason to make him her bastion of sanity after the last few days. "Hey, I was only picking gravel out of my knees for a few minutes, the last time. Hi," he waved to Martine. "Dale Yardley."

"Martine," he smiled a little, even shook hands with her classmate. "Nice to meet you. I've heard... absolutely nothing about you."

Joss whacked him on the arm before she remembered he was supposed to be an invalid. Or maybe not. "I've told you about Dale! He was in some of my psych classes, plays hockey?" Dale just laughed, though, which meant that she couldn't help smiling a little. He was one of those living rays of sunshine who had that effect on people. Even her.

"Uh..." Martine clearly didn't remember. "Oh, right."

Dale just laughed, clapped his shoulder and pulled out a seat, only to turn around and flop on it backwards with his arms folded on the back. "Don't worry about it, man, I'm sure she's got better things to do than chat about her friends."

Somehow, he managed to make it not sound uncomfortably lewd, just a bit suggestive. He acted like such a stereotypical All-American beer-drinking sports-watching guy that Joss always forgot Dale was gay right up until he started hitting on her boyfriends. Well, this one, and any other guy friends of hers she introduced to him. Martine didn't catch it, or he ignored it, one of the two.

Which made her briefly wonder if Martine would find Dale attractive, too. Uh.

Martine kissed the top of her head when she sat down and went to get them a couple drinks. Dale had his, dangled from long, pale-and-burnt fingers. She eyed his hands with some amusement. "You know, you do need to put suntan lotion on your hands, too. Even if you have gloves on."

"Huh?" Blink. And then he looked down again. "Oh, right. I put lotion on!"

" _Suntan_ lotion. And... wait, you use lotion?"

He nodded. Grinned, took a sip of coffee. "Either that or get really nasty rubs and callouses. Also smells lavender fresh, here..." He tried to palm her face, too. She laughed, ducking out of the way and almost knocking into Martine when he came back with two tall, mostly black coffees. But the good stuff. French press, she thought.

"Hey, easy there..." he smiled. She grinned back up at him and took hers. "Addict."

"Shut up, you're addicted, too." Small sip of coffee there, because it was hot, but she wanted if not needed the jump-start. And if she was going to be up for a while, she might as well indulge. Even if the caffeine likely wouldn't be good for her nerves or her blood pressure.

Dale straightened up a little, looking back and forth between the two of them. Joss looked back, bland and hiding behind a fragile mask of being the badass chick. After a second he set his coffee cup down on the table and shook his head. "All right, what's really going on?"

Joss swallowed her coffee quickly and more of it than she meant to, feeling it burn down her throat. "What do you mean?" Behind her, she felt Martine straighten, too. Both of them were defensive, and this was someone she had known and gone to school with for a couple years now. That was a bad sign.

"You, you both look like hell, you're jumpy... what's happening?" Dale gestured with his coffee cup, making her glad it was still lidded with that plastic spout thingie.

She sighed. "It's... been a rough week." Briefly, she outlined at least what she could say about things without making her sound crazy. The part about not getting much sleep, some of the nightmares. The part about Martine fainting, and then the aphasic fit, now that she knew what it was called. And then the part about her hitting her head on the dresser. She didn't mention that it was because she'd been thrown into it.

"Christ..." Dale murmured, shaking his head. "Why aren't you in the hospital, man?"

Martine shrugged. "Nothing they can do. They can't detect anything, so there's nothing for them to fix. As far as they're concerned I have migraines or maybe cluster headaches, but they can't find anything physically wrong with me. I'd just be taking up another bed."

Dale winced. His expression clearly said he wanted to suggest something else, but couldn't think of what would be good. "You really should... I don't know, sorry. That sucks."

"Yeah, it does. Sorry, I didn't mean to bring you down..." Joss sort of waved a hand. "I just..."

He was looking at Martine behind her with a frowning expression, which wasn't something Dale did very often. She looked over her shoulder at Martine, who was looking out the front window at a man. A familiar-looking man. The guy from the chapel?

"Are you..." she started, when Martine stood, one hand squeezing her shoulder for a second.

"I'll be back in a bit. Sit back, relax." He smiled a little. "Enjoy coffee. Nice to meet you, Dale."

"Yeah, you too..." Dale nodded, giving him a bit of a suspicious look as Martine headed towards the door. Joss looked back and forth between the two of them, wondering what the hell had just happened.

There was no logic behind his going out to talk to the man. He didn't know him. He was sick or injured or both, and should have been sitting and drinking coffee with his girlfriend and her friend from school. And instead he was standing out by the road with a stranger whose intentions he knew nothing about.

"I'm sorry," the stranger smiled, extended a hand. "I'm Daniel Messenger. I thought we should meet."

Martine shook the other man's hand out of politeness, and took his hand back again when he said that. He also stuck his hands deep into his pockets. "Why did you think that?"

"I'm sorry... I assume she didn't tell you, then. Your lady friend and I met while I was visiting her campus on business, she told me a little bit about her current troubles. I don't mean to pry..."

But he was prying. And while that explained at least why he acted like he was a familiar face at least, it didn't explain the longer-term implications of the phrase _thought we should meet._ Which meant, or at least it seemed to mean, that this Daniel Messenger person knew him. Had met him before. Was aware of his existence.

He was getting a headache again. Hands came up and palms pressed to the side of his head at the temples; he shook his head slowly. "Sorry, I just... maybe we should do this another time."

"Get those often? The migraines, I mean." He tapped a finger to his temple and looked at Martine in a way that suggested he knew what he was talking about. Martine wasn't sure how to explain that, any more than he had an idea how to explain the squirrelly feeling he got when he looked at the man. He just nodded, after a second or two of considering an answer. That was answer enough.

"Yeah."

Daniel Messenger shook his head. "Your nature makes it difficult to maintain your form without some kind of compensation." Without warning he reached forward, took Martine's head in his hands with two fingertips pressed to his temples. Martine jerked backwards, not that it helped very much.

But the pain was gone. The memory of pain was gone, leaving only a bemused sense of absence and the feeling that he was missing some weight he'd been carrying around on his back or in his pockets for weeks. Months. "How did..." Martine blinked, wondering if he had had that headache more or less constantly and was just now remembering what life was like without pain. And in that case, what was going on?

Information overload. There was too much to process and no clue where to begin.

"You weren't made to suffer, friend. You really should see someone more consistently about that. At least until you remember how to manage it yourself."

Martine's eyebrows shot up, irritated. "What would you know about it?"

"Quite a lot, actually. I suffer from something similar, myself. There are things you can do about it, but you have to speak to the right professionals. From what your lady friend tells me, she's very frustrated with the way your doctors have been handling your case..."

Some of the irritation dissipated, but he still didn't like being condescended to. And he couldn't get away from the feeling that this man was chasing his words around in circles trying to avoid talking openly about something important. Like he was testing Martine to see if he'd remembered something yet. It made him irrationally angry, want to scream at the man or grab him by his lapels and shake him.

None of which would do any good.

Also distracting was the fact that he kept expecting the tension to manifest itself in a further headache, and it wasn't. There was nothing there, an absence of sensation where he was used to even unpleasant sensation resting, and it threw him off balance.

"You're not a priest, are you," was what he said. Joss had only mentioned meeting some guy hanging around the chapel and he'd assumed it was a priest. The guy carried himself like a priest. But he didn't have the collar or any other obvious signs, so if he was, he was one of those denominations that didn't use obvious signs. Martine wasn't sure which those were.

Messenger shook his head. "I'm not a priest. Just a concerned friend..." And he held up one hand as Martine opened his mouth to argue. "A concerned fellow being who sees a person going through the same thing he went through, and would like to help. That's all. I am a man of faith, if that's what you're asking."

"It wasn't." But everything he said had the ring of truth about it, simple truth, more than the double-speak he'd been talking earlier. It was a start, at least.

The man gave him a measuring sort of a look. "It's not going to go away by ignoring it, Martine. God did not give us challenges so that we could turn away from them and refuse to fight."

"Fight? Fight what?"

"For ourselves. For our lives and the things we value. In your case, for your health and well-being, and your relationships with your loved ones." Although there was a tone of disapproval about the way he said that. Martine wasn't sure if it was because of the argument or something else. The whole thing was getting a little too creepy. He'd regretted coming out and talking to the man the moment they'd gotten past introductions, and now he was regretting it even more.

After another second of consideration he just shook his head and turned to go back inside. The man took a breath to say something, Martine heard him, expected to be called after. Maybe something like _I can help you_ or _you're making a mistake._ But the other man said nothing, and Martine was both puzzled and relieved by that.

Joss was looking better, at least, when he got back in. Dale and she both looked up at him in silent inquiry, to which he shrugged. "Just wanted to say hi, I guess," he lied.

It should have disturbed him how easily the lie came to him. Given the way Joss looked so much better just for having fifteen minutes of normal, it didn't.

Alais was awake by the time they got back. Martine's headache was starting to creep back in dribs and drabs, but it was so mild compared to how he'd evidently been living from day to day that he didn't worry, and decided not to worry anyone else with it either. Alais was sitting up on the couch and chatting with Paula with most of her usual animation and fervor. Joss squeezed his hand, relieved.

"Hey, you." Martine smiled, came over and kissed her cheek. "You're looking better."

"I feel better," Alais beamed up at him. "I feel better than I have in weeks, actually. Maybe all I needed was a good night's sleep."

Paula glared up at them both over the back of Alais's head. Not an expression of accusation but the kind of glare that said she would rip into them both in a very un-Paula like manner if they so much as hinted that anything out of the ordinary had happened.

Martine was just as happy to ignore the strangenesses of the past few days, no matter what creepy men in long coats said. "You gave us quite a scare, there, you were asleep for a while. Must have been exhausted."

"Well, I feel fine," she assured him. One hand rested on his arm for a moment, rubbing lightly up and down. She did feel good. He felt more assured by her touch than he had in, well, weeks, as she'd put it. "I feel healthy, I feel ready to get up and resume my life."

"Which you're not going to do for at least a couple of days," Paula told her. "You came home, took a couple days off, and you're going to take those days off and stay here and get some rest."

Joss was staying out of this discussion, Martine noticed. Out of guilt, maybe? Maybe just out of not really having anything to contribute except going over to the kitchen and pouring everyone a glass of water. He managed to catch her eye and nod to the kettle. She might as well put on some tea while the whistling of the kettle wouldn't bother anyone.

"... going on, and it's not ..." Martine came back in the middle of a conversation, and Alais looked over at him. "... sounding good. Are you sure _you're_ feeling all right? When Joss called me on the phone she sounded out of her mind."

Joss made some kind of noise from over in the kitchen, but didn't say anything.

"It was pretty scary, Alais," Martine said after a second, not really scolding but clearly defending Joss from Alais's possibly poor choice of words. They'd all been kind of panicked. He'd been trying not to admit it, and he'd done his usual bang-up job of living in denial, but they'd been scared.

Alais shook her head. "Oh, no, I'm not saying it wasn't, just that it sounded terrifying and now... everyone seems to be all right."

Martine looked over at Paula for a second. She shook her head a fraction of an inch to either side. Whatever had happened to Alais, it didn't seem as though she remembered most of the past twenty four hours. He wasn't sure how good that was. It certainly did seem to point to something altering her state of mind, though, whether possession or some kind of illness or injury or whatever. Which made three of them, at least, who were affected. Two of them. Joss wasn't affected yet, she was just tired and stressed.

Which made Paula the only one here who was likely to be thinking clearly. Great.

"I don't know what's going on," Joss said finally, when no one else seemed to want to say anything. "I mean, he was... a wreck. More so than usual both days, and now everything seems like it's back to normal." _And it's freaking me out_ , he heard, underneath her clipped tones and behind her fingers pressed tight around her tea mug. Playing with the paper tag over one side of the rim, thank god the cup wasn't full yet.

"We need to figure it out, though. And we need to do it pretty quick, but if we start talking right now I think we're just going to talk ourselves into circles." He was thinking in circles, right now. Two fingers pressed against his temple in what, he realized a second later, was an unconscious imitation of the strange man's gesture. He dropped his hand as soon as he noticed. "Look... Alais, I know you got a lot of sleep, but maybe you'd better give us a bit? At least Joss. I ought to sign in to work before they wonder where I am, get some of that done."

Joss opened her mouth to protest and a kettle noise shrilled out, making the other three giggle. Martine stopped first, giving her a chastened look when she glared at him. "I'm fine, I got plenty of sleep..."

"No, you didn't. And I don't think you have a concussion, either, and right now I think you need sleep more than you need to stay awake." Which, okay, was a blatant contradiction of what he'd said before but she hadn't been showing any signs of concussion and he knew she was already exhausted. "Drink your tea and go to bed."

"Concussion?" Alais looked around sharply. "What..."

"I'll explain it after I get Miss Jocelyn here to bed." Martine dodged both the elbow and the mug now-full of hot tea sloshing all over the place. Joss wasn't so lucky, and swore as some splashed over the edge and onto her hand.

Paula nodded, one hand tangling through Alais's hair. She seemed to be calming down now that everyone else was, too. "That sounds like a reasonable plan. Why don't you call from the bedroom, if that's all right? You can keep an eye on her, if..."

Alais struggled to sit up against her girlfriend's protests. "Here, why don't we go into the bedroom instead. Joss can sleep on the couch, Martine can work out here, we won't have to move the whole workstation and everyone can get the rest they need."

It seemed like the most reasonable course of action to him. Inasmuch as anything seemed reasonable these days. He nodded. Managed to steer Joss to the couch and prop her up on it once Paula had gotten Alais to the bedroom and half-closed the door behind them. "You can drink your tea, but then you have to at least promise me you'll try and get some rest, okay?" he whispered. He even dragged her favorite little skull and crossbones coaster over with the sullen-looking animated girl on it and the death thing. Joss quirked a tired little smile, but nodded.

"The second anything looks hinky about the way I'm sleeping, _assuming_ I fall asleep, you call 911, okay? Twitching, drooling, mumbling, whatever." She pointed a finger at him. Then looked back over at the bedroom. "What are you going to tell Alais about, you know?"

"I don't know," Martine sighed. "I guess I'll wait and talk it over with Paula, first."

Joss nodded. Set her mug down on the coaster and reached up for a hug, arms outstretched like a plaintive little child. He hugged her, tight, because there had been way too many frights the past few days and far too many near misses and he was scared. More scared than he was willing to admit.

"Love you," she whispered in his ear. Which also told him how scared she was.

"Love you too," he whispered back, and kissed her. "Get some sleep, okay?"

"Yes, papi," she snorted, and burrowed into the couch cushions.

Alais wanted to argue against splitting them up, that there was more reassurance in all staying huddled together, but the truth was she was glad when Paula closed the door behind them even halfway. Whatever was going on between Martine and Joss and the two of them, she felt like she had walked in on the middle of something that she had sleepwalked through. Something that her involvement had been written in but not participated. Waking up in the middle of a play and realizing she didn't know her lines.

"What's going on?" she asked Paula, when the other woman had come out of the bathroom with a cup of room temperature tap water and set it by the bed in the clear hopes that she would drink it. Alais was a bit fussy about her water.

Paula took a breath, then climbed over to the other side of the bed and sat propped up against the pillows. "I don't know. Honestly, I don't. Joss sounded... she called me while you were asleep. She said that something strange had happened after you came back to the States, you and she took Martine to the hospital, do you remember?"

Alais didn't remember. She remembered landing, and something about meeting Joss at the airport and after that it was all fuzzy. "To be honest, I don't even know if I remember meeting Joss at the airport," she admitted after a second. It seemed like the sort of thing she should remember, and it fit with the shapes in her mind, but there was no clear memory of words exchanged or sights or any such things.

The other woman nodded. She kept her eyes on Alais's hands, though, and not up at her face or, really, anywhere near. "Joss picked you up at the airport. You came back here, I think, and then to the hospital. I'm not sure, I wasn't there for that part..."

That part was of less concern to Alais than the way Paula was acting now. Not quite looking at her now that it was just the two of them, not talking very much about what she wasn't remembering. Avoiding a lot of things. There had never been avoidance and silence between the two of them before.

"And then there was an MRI," she'd been told about that. "And something happened with the machine."

Paula nodded. "Something happened. Joss thinks it was something strange, but it sounds like just a power outage to me, something mis-wired, something ... that shorted out something else, I don't know. Maybe someone left something they shouldn't have in the room."

Which was a reasonable explanation, and it still didn't sound right to Alais. "We came home..."

"And that's the part I don't know what happened. Joss says there was a fight, and something happened to Martine, and... she hit her head..."

Alais shook her head. "No. Something else happened, Paula, look at me." She had to take the other woman's face in her hands to get her to look up, and that hurt. The lump in her throat pressed against her words, so she tried to kiss it away. "What happened?"

"Something... I don't know. I wasn't there. Joss said... she said you threw her across the room. Into a dresser." Paula's hands came up behind her shoulders, but it still felt like she didn't know whether to pull Alais closer or push her away. She solved that problem for Paula by pulling away and getting out of bed even under protest, going over to look at the dresser in question. It had to be the one she and Joss shared. Some of the knicknacks were overturned, the mirror on top slightly askew. There was hair caught in a couple of the lower handles, too.

Alais frowned. "Something happened, anyway. Something did happen. She hit..." Joss was the only one who had hair this long and this dark, Martine's wasn't so long and her own hair wasn't so dark. "She hit pretty hard."

"But you couldn't have! That's the thing, Alais, you couldn't have, she isn't a big girl, but she's a human being. You couldn't pick her up and..."

She didn't know how to explain to Paula that it didn't sound so far-fetched. Just that she felt strange. Had felt strange for weeks and now felt better, and everything was just a little bit off. Enough so that any explanation seemed plausible right now.

"There's too much here that we don't understand," she said finally, still crouched down by the dresser. "We need to..."

The phone rang, interrupting her and scaring both of them out of their minds. Alais sank back against the dresser while her heart slowed back down, hoped neither of them had yelped loud enough to interrupt Martine. That wasn't his work phone, either. That was something else.

Out in the living room she heard Joss stumping about, muttering things in Spanish. From the tone of it, _who the hell is that_ was the least of what she was saying.

"Hi, this is Rheba from Sisters of Mercy, we're doing a follow-up on Martine Ducharme, checked out against medical advice twenty four hours ago..."

Joss looked up and over at Alais. "I still say you should have named him Guerre..."

"No," the older woman interrupted.

The phone was on speaker so everyone could hear and figure out what to do. Joss waved her arms around in furious gestures as the woman continued, indicating what Rheba from Sisters of Mercy could do with the forms she claimed they hadn't filled out. It made Paula smile, at least.

It made Alais smile, too, but there was only so much she could let Joss gesture and swear at the phone. Normally Joss was more level-headed than this, but the poor girl had been under so much pressure from every angle possible the past few days, it was no wonder at least to Alais that every next stressor was resulting in a storm of swearing before she could calm down and be more practical. Alais picked up the phone instead, moving into the bedroom.

"Hello, Rheba, this is Alais, I believe I'm listed on his emergency contact information..." She heard the other woman clacking on her keyboard over the phone. One of those old, big keyboards that was loud and fingernails that sounded artificial tapping on the keys. Or maybe it was just her imagination. "I'm sorry if we didn't manage to catch all the forms but I believe we did, we checked with the receptionist on duty..."

"Well, I have an Acknowledgment of Information form that should have been signed and dated, and wasn't. All the relevant fields are filled out, it's just that without a signature, we have no way of telling, we have no record that the patient was fully apprised of the risks of checking out against medical advice."

Alais sighed. She should have grabbed the phone sooner, at this rate. Bureaucratic redundancy irritated Joss more than it did herself, and with all the stress of Martine passing out and then disappearing to talk to a stranger and acting odd, no wonder she'd snapped. Alais, at least, had had a little while to rest. If passing out could be called resting. "If you would fax the form over to us we can have him sign it and send it back to you. I'm afraid he's working right now, and shouldn't be disturbed."

"Well..." More clacking, and a noisy sigh from Rheba. "That would fulfill the paperwork requirements, however, with the time between when he filled out the form and when he signed it there might be some..."

"But he did fill out the form," Alais smiled, sweet and perky. "There was a nurse there who watched him do it and briefed him on every line item. I believe that's why it's called an Acknowledgement of Information form?"

"Ye-es..."

"Well, can you have her sign a statement that the discrepancy between the filling out of the form and the signature was an oversight at the time and not at all related to..."

"This would really be easier if we could talk to Mr. Ducharme himself..." Rheba hedged, whether because of some HIPAA clause or regulation or because she wasn't getting anywhere with Alais, it was hard to tell. They weren't discussing any medical information were they? Yet. Maybe there was something medically relevant.

MRI scans couldn't be turned over in 24 hours, could they?

"I'm afraid that's impossible at the moment, he's at work and can't be disturbed for anything less than an emergency." And if it was a medical emergency, like he was bleeding out of his brain or something, they would have to tell her, right? Or at least they would have to tell her that it was an emergency and then she would put Martine on the phone.

"Well, it would really be best..."

So it wasn't an emergency. That was a relief, at least? Except the person who was determining whether or not it was an emergency was a receptionist at a hospital whose judgment Alais wasn't exactly trusting right now. Dammit.

"I'm sorry, but you'll have to call back later." When they could duck her calls. "It's just not a good time right now." One hand curled around the door frame as she wandered back out into the main room again.

Rheba made a clicking sound with her tongue that sounded far more annoying than the keyboard and gave Alais a flare of a stress headache. "Ma'am, hospital policy is to hold patients in the event that they experience or display symptoms consistent with a life-threatening conditions. Do you consider that short-term memory problems and an inability to concentrate following a history of headaches and a possible seizure?"

By the time the woman had reached the end of the second sentence Alais couldn't remember how she'd begun the first. "I... suppose so?"

"Having reviewed Mr. Ducharme's history I see nothing here that indicates his condition is worsening drastically, up to the point where he reported passing out at the mall and the aphasic fit. Either of those would be cause for alarm, but what worried Dr. Mayhew most was the fact that it comes across like your friend is trying to hide things from his doctors. Things that could seriously help his treatment. Do you understand me?"

The words jumbled up on top of each other. "I think so. But we can't..."

"Why don't you put Mr. Ducharme on the phone, dear, and I'll explain it all to him."

Alais's cheeks flushed. This was supposed to be her area of expertise, she usually did this, handled the bureaucracy. But today she was off her game. Joss stared at her, Paula did not but she felt the concern flowing off of her regardless. Alais moved around the couch and to Martine's working nook, holding the phone out to him wordlessly and keeping her eyes fixed on a spot below his shoulder so she wouldn't see the look in his eyes.

After a second he took the phone from her. "This is Martine." His voice snapped out crisp and enunciated. She went back over to Paula's side and didn't look at anyone, this time.

Joss sat curled up on the couch, her back against Martine's knees. He had about fifteen minutes before he had to be back on the phone, although it had been a thankfully slow day. Paula and Alais sat and stood respectively, holding hands. Alais had to be the strong one now, her turn. She wasn't sure what to say, but at least the bureaucracy was held off for one more day or two.

"What do we want to do..." she started, then stopped. That was the wrong question. "What are our options for dealing with the doctors?"

"Ignore them," Martine snapped out, and got whacked on the shin by Joss.

"It's a nice idea, but they don't usually respond well to being ignored. On the other hand, we could get lost in the paperwork shuffle, but that would mean the medications get cut off, and that could be bad."

At least she was calmer now. Alais nodded at that; if they ignored the doctors they also couldn't go to them for refills, and Martine did still need his pain medications, as far as she knew. "We need to at least keep good relations with the prescribing doctor, that's your regular doctor, isn't it?"

Martine grunted and nodded. He had kept pretty much silent since he'd gotten off the phones for his break, leaving them to interpret his expressions and the noises he made. It could have been worse, Alais supposed. She'd nursed him through sulking fits like this before. She wasn't sure what had brought this one on, though. Maybe nothing more complicated than a bad phone call. They could use some ordinary sources of irritation right about now.

"We could go in for the follow-up they want," Joss said, and everyone looked at her. "I'm just saying, it might not be as bad as we think. As I think," she admitted.

Alais was pretty sure she was thinking some pretty bad things. She'd talked about it, once or twice, with Alais. What would happen if there really was a medical emergency with Martine and what they would do, who would make which decisions. Joss's statements had been practical, but also leaned towards the dire in scope. It made Alais wonder who Joss had had die on her in a hospital somewhere to go through the gamut from benign to terrifying and hit most of the reasonable points along the way.

"It might not be, but we have to be prepared that they'll want tests and scans that will be expensive, even with insurance, and that they'll find something that may want further treatment even more than we have been advised of already."

Both women groaned at that, and Martine shook his head. "They don't know what the hell they're doing, anyway. They're just going to take more scans that don't do anything and stare at pictures that don't mean anything for..."

"If you're so convinced it's useless, why did you even go to the hospital anyway?" Joss snapped back, straightening up and turning around to glare at him. "If you're not going to do anything but shoot down our ideas, get your dumb ass back on the damn phones."

Paula stared at her. "Joss, maybe you should..." She fell silent as Alais laid a hand on her shoulder.

Martine looked at Joss for a moment, then pushed off the couch and went to pace in the kitchen, yanking open the door and staring into the fridge for a couple of minutes. No one decided to ask him if he wanted to cool down the whole apartment that way.

"Is there a chance we could find a sympathetic doctor, maybe one who was open to alternative medicine?" Now Alais was starting to get a headache.

Joss frowned, thinking. "I don't know where we would begin looking... I guess on the website, under the list of doctors, they might have some information about each of them, or we could start calling them and interviewing, or looking them up on the web..." she rattled off ideas as fast, it sounded like, as she thought of them. Alais nodded.

"I can help with that, if you want," Paula offered. Quietly, but getting out of her chair and going over to Alais's bag with her laptop as she spoke. "I can take down lists of local homeopathic practices if you want, and we can..."

"Cross-reference that with lists of doctors on the insurance list and see which ones match, maybe highlighting the list of homeopathic practices that make specific reference to working with medical professionals even if they don't..." Alais and Paula were both staring at her with some amusement now, and even Martine had closed the fridge door and was staring. "... actually say which ones. What?"

Martine's lips were quirked in a tired, tiny smile. "You'll do your homework first," he told her. "I won't have you flunking your last few classes because I ..."

Everyone waited for him to finish. After a second or two Alais decided to let them talk it over, going over to Paula and sitting down behind her, rubbing her shoulders. "We can probably start with the white pages or the yellow pages or whatever they are these days. See what happens, what we come up with."

Paula nodded, keeping her head half tilted to the conversation behind them. Alais took her head in her hands and gently turned it back to the monitor, smiling.

"Focus. They can handle it without us, he's been grumpy before. And given the circumstances, I don't exactly blame him." Alais shook her head. "And his fifteen minutes will be up soon, anyway."

"They look like they've made up," she said. Alais looked over her shoulder. Joss and Martine were curled up on the couch, her head buried against his shoulder, his fingers lost in her dark hair.

"So they do. Let's get started on that list, in that case."

It was almost more surprising that Joss managed to sleep through the night than it was that all four of them were sleeping under one roof. No one wanted to leave anyone alone for fear that something terrible might happen, the specific nature of that terrible thing depending on who was fearing for whom. They ended up all looking out of the corners of their eyes at each other so much that Alais finally said they were all damn well going to sit down and play Trivial Pursuit until they fell asleep at the table, or something equally mindless.

Which had led to a one in the morning trip out to the nearest big box store to get a Trivial Pursuit game at all, but at least it lightened the mood considerably.

Joss was kind of yawning by the time she got to the campus coffee shop, but sleeping through the night still did wonders on her outlook and her mood. She even managed a wave and a smile for Rob when she saw him.

"You look like..."

"... shit, I know, Dale said, you should have seen me yesterday." Joss shook her head, flopped into a chair. "What did you get?"

"Tall dark and double shot, just the way you..." she about grabbed it out of his hand. "Like it. Careful, it's... hot."

Joss winced. Okay, that had been one of her dumber moves lately. "And bitter. Ugh." Still, she took more care with the next sip and drank it anyway. Rob frowned.

"I thought that's what you usually get," he shrugged, sitting down.

Another sip. It still tasted bitter to her, but then again, it was hard to tell if it actually tasted different or not. "Huh, I thought it was too... I don't know, maybe they made it wrong. Doesn't matter as long as it's got caffeine in it. Did you bring the notes?"

He waved a flash drive at her. "Alphabetized by subject and divided into folders by class. Don't say I never gave you anything."

Joss stuck her tongue out at him before she snatched the flash drive and opened up her laptop. "I called you because you really are just that anal. So hush." He laughed, leaned back in his chair and waited while she copied over the folders to her computer. "God, I don't even know how much class I've missed anymore, let alone how much I'm going to miss."

"I think they'll waive the attendance requirement, given how close you are to graduating, if you keep your grades up," Rob shrugged.

"I hope so. Anyway... I don't even know what's going to happen now, especially not if he does have to be hospitalized, we'll be pretty much ..." Joss trailed off, not wanting to think about that. They'd be relying on Alais for income and the good will of Martine's employer for insurance, at least until she could get a job. Which was far from certain, anymore. "It's complicated."

"Always is. But, I mean... couldn't you go back to live with your parents?"

She was shuddering before he had finished his sentence. "I could. If I wanted to be asked when I was going to find a nice boy and settled down, get married, have kids, or at least have a career if I wasn't going to find a nice boy and settle down, etcetera, etcetera. I think my mother's carrying around my biological clock, she can't believe I don't want to give her grand-children."

Rob snorted. "I mean, just... you haven't brought him around to any of the school parties, you don't talk about him much..."

"There isn't much to talk about." And she didn't feel like explaining the ins and outs of her relationship, even to a bunch of supposedly liberal college students. A lot of them had their weird biases, accepting certain kinds of strangeness without a qualm but other kinds of strangeness were taboo and icky.

She didn't want to find out in the course of conversation with someone she thought was a friend that the way she'd chosen to live her life was icky. There were just some things you didn't want to deal with when you were trying to pound your way through college on an academic scholarship, and that, for her, was one of them. And besides, her relationship with Martine was stable. Most of the time. Almost domestic.

"Yeah, but.... I mean. There isn't... anything wrong, is there?" Rob had that kind of sideways look that made her blink for a second. And then she had to laugh.

"Oh, god. You think... what, you think this is..." It wasn't funny. It really wasn't that funny, the only reason she was laughing was because she was exhausted and of all the problems that the relationship had, abuse wasn't one of them. "No, I promise, I'm not being dominated or abused or ordered around or beaten or anything. Talk to Dale, he's met the guy." Briefly. Martine had kind of scampered out of that to talk to that weird guy from the chapel, then come back in a worse mood than he'd started. She'd meant to ask him about that. Martine, not Dale.

"Okay..." but Rob didn't look entirely convinced.

Joss handed him back the flash drive and wrapped both hands around her coffee cup as though her life depended on it. "Martine... has issues. Not, you know, mental ones, just. Health issues. He gets migraines really easily, and the whole collapsing in the... mall. I didn't tell you."

"No, you didn't. You just said that there was some medical shit going on, I thought..." he ducked his head into his shoulders like a turtle, cheeks flaming bright red.

It didn't take a better-rested genius to figure out what he'd thought. "Oh god fucking Christ hell no, Rob! No! Eew! I am not pregnant!" At least, she'd damn well better not be pregnant. "And anyway, we use prot--"

"I don't need to know that!" he covered his hands over his ears. "La la lalalala I'm not listening!" Which led to Joss yelling Condoms! Con-doms at him over the table and up against his ears.

Thank god they were in the college coffee shop. No one did much more than glare at them for disrupting the frantic, last-minute studying going on.

When Joss got back the lights were dimmed, almost down to migraine levels. Martine was sitting in the armchair, she recognized his silhouette, but that was Paula and Alais on the couch so she didn't know what was going on. Alais waved her over, but gestured for her to be quiet.

"What's going on?" she whispered.

Alais tugged her to sit down on the couch next to her. "Paula had a friend who's a hypno-therapist, we thought it might help. Couldn't hurt, at least." With a small shrug and a look that, in the dim light, Joss thought was a little despairing.

No, it couldn't hurt. In theory. Hypnotists couldn't make you do anything you didn't want to do, right? But they could make you remember things. And Martine had forgotten for a reason, and maybe that reason was psychological, and Joss shook her head, annoyed with herself. When had she gotten so damn squeamish? Martine must have agreed to this before they'd put him under, so he must at least be willing to accept that he might find out things he hadn't wanted to know. And that should be good enough for her.

"What do you see?"

She'd missed the first part of this. They'd already put Martine under, and by the look of the man's face this wouldn't have been his first choice for a course of action. On the other hand, they were kind of running out of options. Maybe hypnotism would help.

Maybe it was Paula's way of reacting to the improbable and mysterious with something equally improbable and mysterious. Joss snorted quietly, still getting a look from Paula despite trying to keep herself silent. But still, of all the things they'd been through in the past few days, this was positively banal.

"He's screaming..." Martine was saying, and it was the first time she realized how child-like his voice sounded. Not in pitch or tone, although there were elements of both, but something innocent. Something that still clung to innocence despite it being ripped away, and was begging to have that innocence returned to him. "I hear him screaming. I see..."

Everyone was quiet for a second. Alais and the hypno-therapist leaned forward a little, frowns of concern on their faces.

Martine's arm swept out and almost caught her in the face with the back of his hand. Almost propelled him off the couch, elbow banging on the table just as the lights started flickering off and then dimly on again. Joss opened her mouth to say something when thunder crashed outside, close enough to set off a car alarm. Or something. It was very loud in there all of a sudden.

And Martine was shouting something, she couldn't hear it at first after distraction of the thunder and then car alarm. And then she didn't want to hear it.

"No, no, no, daddy, no, please, no..." The sick thing, to her mind, was that there was still love in his voice. That kind of pleading only came from love and the tenacious conviction that the person you were begging was still capable of doing the right thing, of caring for you, of making everything better.

Under Martine's present circumstances, she was pretty sure nothing was going to make that better. He'd erased his entire past, including whatever this was. That wasn't something someone who was better did.

"Daddy, please, no..." Martine was flailing, trying to make his limbs work but it wasn't working, he was too big or something, something wasn't right about the way he was moving. Like he was unused to his body. The therapist was trying to get him to calm down. Alais tried to tell him it wasn't going to work that way, and Joss realized she was backed up and perched on the back of the couch again, one foot wedged between the cushions.

Martine was still screaming. The hypno-therapist was saying something, and between the thunder and the crash of broken glass that dragged along her nerves all she caught was the last two-one count and then silence.

And a thud as Martine fell over the side of the armchair.

The lights stopped flickering. Joss looked up at them just in time to catch one last power surge that blew the bulb and gave her spots in her vision. Outside the thunder was either dissipating or just seemed less scary with no one yelling and flailing in the room. She glanced at the window, caught sight of their reflections, all of them faces of varying degrees of pale against the black-seeming glass.

"All right, that's downright spooky," she muttered, coming around the couch.

Martine was sitting up, eyes wide. No one had the first clue what had happened.

Paula changed the light-bulb, being the tallest of them and probably the surest of her footing on the small stepladder right now. Joss picked up the pieces of broken glass from where Martine had swept a glass off the table, and exactly whose bright idea it had been to give him a glass when they had plastic cups for just such a (far too common) occasion she didn't know. Probably the hypnotist's.

"Can you..." Paula's fingers crossed the edge of Joss's vision, and she looked up, then followed the line of her fingers.

Light bulbs. They'd have to get light bulbs at the store. "Sorry, here." She passed one up to Paula, turning over a piece of glass in her fingers before dropping it into the paper bag. They kept plastic cups, durable hard to shatter plates, all of that around for exactly this reason. They didn't use anything that could shatter if they could help it. How the hell had this gotten on the table in what everyone knew was a delicate situation?

"Joss?" Paula was done, climbing off the ladder and looking at her with some concern. "Hey, are you okay?"

Joss shook her head a little. "Sorry, just thinking. We don't... usually have glass out because of this. In case something breaks."

Paula nodded, walking with her to the kitchen to get another paper bag to put that one in, just in case. It was a little funny. Joss was used to arguing with Alais about whether or not double paper bags around glass shards was overdoing it, little things like that. Paula just went along with it. She wondered if they did that at home, too.

"I mean, what... whose idea was that, do you remember?" she looked over, but the older woman was shaking her head. "It's just... it seems stupid."

"Sorry, I don't..." Paula reached out and in another moment Joss realized she was almost crying, just from someone rubbing her shoulder in a friendly way. "How much sleep have you gotten in the last few days? I mean really, actual sleep? No interruptions, no bad dreams..."

"I can't do much about the bad dreams," she pointed out. But Paula was right, it had been... she couldn't even think how many days it had been. A week, almost. She'd had this thought before. She'd had this conversation with someone before and she didn't remember it. Her life was going around in circles. She needed more than one good night, she needed a week of rest and nothing more stressful than deciding on waffles or pancakes in the morning.

Joss leaned against the kitchen counter, not yet ready to go back and face a hysterical Martine and an Alais who, while well-meaning and certainly soothing in her own right, probably had her hands full. "Did that seem weird to you? I mean, it almost... It seemed really..." She wasn't sure how to explained that it seemed like exactly what one would expect a person on a couch being hypnotized because of a problem in their life to say. My Daddy beat me. My Daddy raped me. "And why is it always the Dad and never the Mom, anyway?"

"Huh?" Paula blinked.

Joss ended up shaking her head and, "Never mind."

She wasn't doing a very good job of concealing her upset, by the look on Paula's face. "All right," she said, but reached around Joss to open the fridge and get out the pitcher of water and a bottle of orange juice. "Which do you want?"

Joss opened her mouth and found herself saying "Juice. Please." Instead. It was probably the better choice. Blood sugar and everything. She was far more aware about such things than she wanted to be right now. She wanted to be the one hysterical and curled up on the bed.

Paula wrapped her fingers around the glass of juice. Plastic glass. Her mouth twitched upwards and Paula smiled back a little. "See? I remembered."

"Thank you."

They both looked over at the same time, and Martine and Alais were still bent over and talking under their breath. Martine seemed to have stopped shaking and twitching, though, which was something.

"You don't actually think he was abused, do you?" Paula asked. Right when Joss was drinking, too. She slopped a little juice on herself, wiped her mouth on the back of her hand.

"No, I don't. That's the convenient answer and, yeah, it's convenient because it happens more often than we want to admit but... Something happened. I think it's more likely that it happened between his parents rather than to him directly. He doesn't react..."

"Like a trauma victim," Paula nodded slowly. "Not like that kind anyway... I volunteer at a rape crisis center," she explained, off Joss's puzzled look. "It's not ... there's no one way that everyone reacts but there are some things that are very common."

She could believe that. And it still didn't match up with how Martine acted. "I don't think this relationship between the four of us would be nearly this healthy if..."

"It probably wouldn't," Paula smiled a little. And the smile faded quickly. "What do you think about the whole... what you were saying earlier."

"... The whole otherworldly freaky stuff aspect? I don't... I couldn't even begin to guess. I mean, it's obviously not vampires..." They shared a laugh over that, and a pair of disgusted expressions with a guest appearance of a few bad jokes about sparkles and southern accents. "But what it is..."

Paula shook her head. "They didn't go deep enough, there's no way to know."

There was, maybe. Or at least a part of a way to know; Joss went back to the Priest, or, the not-Priest, the man who'd said he wasn't a priest but kept lurking around the chapel and she just couldn't shake that feeling like he should be up at the front of a room ministering to people. "I think the man knew him," she explained, not sure what she was getting at. "I think... maybe he knew him from before."

Paula's eyes widened a little. They never talked about before, or at least, never had the two of them talked about before among each other. Joss and Alais rarely talked about it, and never when Martine was around to hear. "Then... you should go talk to him, shouldn't you?"

"I guess..."

Joss set her glass down on the counter before she realized she'd made the decision, heading towards the door. "Alais?" over her shoulder, it was important that at least one of them know where she was going. "I'm going to head back to campus for a bit, there's something I want to check out, will you two be okay?"

Alais nodded over Martine's head. He barely was able to look up at her, but there was something about his hunched shoulders and frightened eyes that made her want to hurry. There had to be something they could find out. Paula grabbed her coat from over the back of the couch.

"Give me a second, I'll come with you."

"And this is where you saw him?" Paula asked looking around.

Joss laughed a little with the memory. "No, this is where I left him. He had the leaves swirling around him and everything. All that was missing was the Hans Zimmer soundtrack."

Paula thought for a second, then shook her head. "Hans Zimmer does epic movies. If he was doing the soundtrack there'd be sword fights or ... something. Motorcycle chases."

"Martine has a motorcycle. Sometimes we even let him drive it," she murmured, looking around. No one was around to ask who the man was or what visitors had been by recently, anything like that. They needed to find someone. Maybe the choir director, or the priest on campus or something. Normally the campus wouldn't have a priest but this year he was the guest lecturer for one of the classics courses. She didn't remember which one.

"Where do we start?"

After a second of looking around Joss shrugged and headed into the chapel. "Right here, I guess." Out of the corner of her eye she saw Paula sketch the sign of the cross. "Oh."

"Hm?" And Paula actually blushed a little when she realized what Joss meant. "Sorry. I didn't..."

"Don't worry about it, my whole family... Well, you know what they say." Small shrug. Joss wasn't sure she was comfortable talking about her mother's religious beliefs to ... well, what was Paula to her, really? Her friend, that was the simplest way to put it. And she wasn't sure how devout Paula was, or even how devout she herself was. It was just easier to leave it all out.

"I can imagine," Paula commented, with more dryness and cynicism than Joss had come to expect. "Sorry... It... "

Joss shook her head as Paula pinched the bridge of her nose and tried to explain. "Don't be. I... Mami's church is one of those that thinks the Holy See speaks the truth, always. I get it. We don't always agree, but I get it." And she was never sure on which points her mother would agree or disagree, so she usually didn't bring up things like this to her. Paula and her Mami, she decided, should probably never meet for similar reasons.

Neither of them looked at each other for a moment. Joss looked around at the pews, the arched ceiling; Paula made the sign of the cross and more of a gesture than a genuflection, possibly out of habit. The college tried to keep it as non-denominational as possible, she remembered. In deference to everyone's differences. Joss had lapsed out of caring about anyone's differences, though she didn't think Paula was that strict, either. Though she probably didn't tell everyone at her church about the configuration of her girlfriend's relationship.

She cleared her throat, trying to drag her mind out of that line of thought and away from the place where her mother started chattering at her about finding a nice, normal young man and settling down. "So, I don't see him around here... I don't know who he came to see, even."

"Is there anyone who would know? Is there maybe a sign-in log, or..."

"Actually, there is," the choir director smiled, leaning in a bit from where he had been arranging hymnals and gesturing them towards the back of the chapel. "Sorry, I overheard your ... It's not something everyone has to sign, but there is a guest book... your friend might have signed there."

They looked. It was hard to tell which crabbed, scribbled name was the one they were looking for, though. Joss counted back and remembered the date, and they looked at all the names there. None of them seemed to stand out.

She looked over at Paula. "If I were a secret government agent slash magical fairy thing slash mysterious priest and member of a secret society or whatever, what kind of a ..." The bad joke hit her a second later. She pointed down at the book. "Please tell me that isn't what I think it is."

"Why, what do you..."

Joss actually would have swore she saw the bulb go off behind her eyes. "Uh-huh."

"Shit," Paula said, then clapped a hand over her mouth. Joss giggled a little.

"It looks like..." she looked down at the book. "He's here to see the religious studies director? I think that's who that is. Want to go pay him a visit?"

"Yeah. I think we do."

It took them a couple tries and five minutes of driving around the block to find the church the director told them about. And when they did, it didn't even look like a church at all. It looked like a school, or a library, or something else like that. An old brick building with white borders and big glass windows against the hallways.

There was a bronze kitchen sink outside the front sign proclaiming it to be the Spirit of Life Unitarian Universalist church. It took Joss a second to get it.

"Hah. Ha ha ha."

"Hm?" Paula was still looking around for signs of the not-a-priest. Joss pointed at the sink. "Wha... ohhh."

"Exactly."

Both of them shook their heads, went in. There was someone at a front desk who looked up when they entered, but all they had to do was give the name before they were pointed down a hall and towards what appeared to be a roundish room with pews all facing inward. It was the strangest thing Joss had ever seen, at least.

"It's a Meeting room."

Both women jumped, turned around. Joss felt her heart stubbornly trying to return to a normal rhythm. "A whating room?"

"A Meeting room. For Meetings for Worship. It's a Quaker celebration of the light of God in everyone. I'm Daniel Messenger," he smiled, extending a hand. "You were looking for me?"

Paula shook his hand on automatic pilot, it looked like, while Joss tried to process that last abrupt curve there. "A whating for whosis? What do the Quakers have to do with..." Then she shook her head. That didn't matter. It was just distracting her. "You were on campus the other day... and then you talked to my boyfriend. And, I don't mean to be rude, but... who are you?"

That last part was a lie. She totally did mean to be rude. She wanted to know who the hell this man was and why he was hanging around her, why he'd called Martine over, why he was going around talking to Martine and what he'd talked to him about.

"I'm sorry," he smiled, spreading his hands. "I didn't mean to give offense. After what you'd told me about him I thought he could use a friendly ear to talk to about his problems, this illness..."

Joss was a little relieved to see that she wasn't the only one giving Mr. Messenger an unfriendly look. Paula didn't seem to trust him either, arms folded over her chest and looking as though she was considering flattening him. Which was a little surprising. Usually Joss was, of the three of them, she thought, more likely to deck people. No one said anything for a little while, and the man shifted a little. His eyes flickered back and forth between the two women.

"Perhaps we should go outside to talk?" he offered. It sounded like he was offering because he thought it would make them feel better.

She nodded, looked over to Paula for confirmation and nodded again. As they left the building Paula hovered behind her like an overprotective big sister, something that Joss appreciated even if it felt a little stranger than usual. Normally it would be Alais who got hovered over. Alais looked like the one who needed protecting, even if she was older. Joss was the tough street-smart chick who kicked everyone's ass.

The church had a little garden behind it. Two gardens, actually. What looked like a little prayer garden, and a zen sand and rock garden. Joss was getting increasingly weirded out by this place. And she was feeling queasy again.

"Look..." she said, now feeling foolish and wanting to get out of there rather than confront some guy who'd shown up in their lives all of twice. "I'm sorry if we barged in on you like this, but it's been a weird week, we're all a little stressed right now, and the kind of help we need is more along the lines of medical professional rather than spiritual, so..."

"Apart from the headaches you mentioned, your friend had nightmares? The occasional visual or auditory hallucination, sensitivity to lights and sounds, a tendency to be over-stimulated? He has dreams about falling or flying, he has an unusual charm for someone so housebound and so out of touch with the world around him, he..."

Paula's hand closed around her shoulder, making her jump. She'd started to listen too closely, like being entranced by the guy, or maybe it was just the stress making her nauseous and dizzy and focus way too much on the sound of his voice. Although what he was saying was damn well worth focusing on.

"All right, stop, already." Joss waved a hand at him. "I get it, you're inside his head. What do you want?"

He frowned a little. "Want? Want is a bit of a mistaken term, I want to help. I'm familiar with his problem, as I said, suffer from it a little myself. When I spoke with him while you were in the coffee shop, I only wanted to offer him my advice and the benefit of my experience, to help him."

And there was that trance like effect again. Joss backed up a little into Paula, except that she did want to believe someone out there knew what was going on with Martine.

"What do you think it is?" she asked, after a second to try and think about it. It could have been anything, really. It could be a brain bleed caused by god knows what. It could be a genetic defect, which would mean that maybe the guy could have the same condition, like people with disorders sticking together. It could be anything. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Something startled the birds on the roof, drawing her attention. A cluster of wings and a clatter of flapping feathers and visual static of brown and black against the blue sky and the sun. Joss blinked. Everything was either too out of focus or drawing her attention too much. She couldn't think.

"I think it's a condition we share. Really, this is something I should talk to him in person about..."

She looked over at Paula because she didn't trust her own thought process right now, let alone her judgment. Paula rubbed her shoulder and said nothing for a moment.

"Why don't we ask him?" She took Joss by the shoulders and steered her towards the building again. "Here, you go call him, and Mr. Messenger and I will talk for a bit about what he thinks it might be and how he thinks he can help. After all, he might not know so much about Martine's life at the moment..."

There followed an exchange of glances too quick for Joss to catch up, as dizzified as she was feeling at the time, but it ended with Messenger looking wrong-footed and annoyed. Anything that annoyed the creepy bastard was fine by her.

"... but he certainly has experiences of his own that he wants to share. So, we'll discuss that, and you talk to him. See what he says."

This seemed like a good plan to Joss. Plus, it got her out of Messenger's line of sight for a while. She nodded and fled, fishing her cell phone out of her pocket as she trotted out to the car.

"I don't like this," she muttered to Paula as they fumbled at the door. Messenger could probably hear her, too, as close behind them as he was. Not that she cared all that much. He knew she didn't trust him, and she knew that he knew it. Everyone was well clear on where they stood.

Paula rubbed her shoulder, didn't nudge or push her into the apartment when the door finally opened, for which Joss was rather grateful. "It'll be what it is. There's four of us and one of him, what can he do?" she added, which made Joss smile.

"I don't think I want to find out," she muttered anyway, and led the way in.

The phone call hadn't been involved. Martine remembered the man from the coffee shop, he didn't like or trust him, either, but there had been something strange going on. Hell, there had been strange things going on all week. So they might as well hear what he had to say.

They hadn't fought, which surprised her. Maybe both of them were resigning themselves to the fact that whatever had been going with him for the last six years, there was only so long it could go on before it came to a head. Before something happened to make it worse or better, before things changed. If nothing else, she was graduating, and that was a big change. Things couldn't stay the way they were forever.

That didn't mean she didn't like things just the way they were. Like when she was a child, sometimes she just didn't want to grow up. The world was a scary place out there. Full of, apparently, people like Daniel Messenger. Who was the poster child for a Stranger Danger campaign, and not in the good way.

Martine looked at her, nodded to Paula, then looked over her shoulder at the Mysterious Stranger with a big McGruff warning flashing over his head. Except that Martine wasn't looking at him as though he were afraid of him or even wary. He was looking at him as though he was having the biggest PMS attack ever and Messenger had just brought home a big tub of double chocolate super fudge chunk ice cream and a maraca-sized bottle of Midol. That made Joss queasy all over again. She didn't want Martine trusting this stranger, she wanted him gone. Out of their lives so they could go back to doctor roulette and trying to get some sort of cause or source to all this that she could see on a screen, that could be duplicated and proven. Something medical, scientific.

Because if it was something medical and scientific it was at least something that could be definitively fixed. Despite her course of study, she was all in favor of her loved ones suffering from things that could be definitively fixed with a course of pills, a regiment of diet and exercise. Surgery. Something.

She went straight to Martine and let them make the round of introductions, pressing in close to his side until he put his arm around her shoulders. It was time for everyone else to be the adult here. She was going to be the kid and put her head under the blankets.

"Martine." Messenger nodded. "Hello."

"Hello again," he said, and his tone said something more like _what the hell are you doing here you crazy bastard._ That was at least enough to get Joss to step away from him and scoot backwards a half pace, crawling up the back of the couch and perching her butt on the back with one leg extended and the other foot tucked on the couch cushions.

Messenger took in the sight of the four of them arrayed in front of him and sighed. "All four of you?"

Martine opened his mouth to say something when Paula spoke up. "Actually, I need to get ready for work..." she murmured, with just enough voice behind it to make herself heard. "Shall we?"

Joss tried to remember if Alais had taken her own car... no, she hadn't. She had picked her up from the airport and then everything had snowballed from there. If Alais wanted to go back to her and Paula's place, and it looked like she did, she'd have to go now.

Still, it took Alais a second to nod and get her stuff together. She hadn't managed to unpack, either, Joss was still stepping over her bag in the hallway. Every five minutes, it seemed like, she was tripping over some reminder of how much had been happening and how tired she was. Her shoulders slumped and she didn't notice it until she started slipping off down the front of the couch. One hand grabbed the back, pushed herself back up. No one noticed.

"We'll be back soon," Alais said, hugged Martine. Paula hugged Joss, who smiled a little. Chaos of the past few days aside, she'd decided she really wanted to get to know the other woman better.

And then they left. The door closed behind them with a timid click, leaving a vast emptiness of sound that seemed like it was rocketing towards an anti-climax. Joss then had to provide one in a deliberately irritating and perky voice.

"Tea, anyone?"

"You know the story from the middle, where your people came in." Messenger nodded at Joss with no disrespect but no real compassion or attention to her as a person, either. "But it had a beginning long before that, and it is still being written. We were not always as we are now. We were meant to be something else, or at least, some of us believed we were."

"Long ago, before the war, there was dissension even then. We were divided on many small subjects, as families are, but we settled them peacefully. The war wasn't the first conflict in a grand paradise of bliss and lackadaisical stagnation, it was only the first conflict that could not be resolved with amicable conversation and a coming to an understanding or a compromise. There were those who chose to walk away. There were those who were defeated, and there were those who turned their backs on the whole affair because they could not bear to see their family torn apart. And many of these were the same. Many people fell into several different camps. Some of those, the ones who chose to walk away and the ones who turned their backs, chose to come here and be a part of something else, to try to find something, purpose, worthiness, in what you have here." Again the nod at Joss. Both of them were staring at him, knowing what he was saying without saying it.

"You must understand, whatever purpose we were created to fulfill, we were never meant to be, to exist, as you and I do now. These bodies are not adequate to contain us, which is why your body is rejecting you inside of it, making you ill. Your innate strength and nature should be containing the damage as I can do for my own form, but because you don't know what you are, you don't know how to do these things. You are like a person who doesn't know how to make his hands move to take food and drink, and so you cannot eat and you starve to death."

It sounded like a French science fiction film. It sounded impossible. It also fit the facts a little too neatly, even with what Messenger didn't and couldn't know.

"Whatever happened to you, it must have caused you to forget. Perhaps you tried to do something your body was incapable of handling, or it was an attack by others of our kind or another kind, I don't know. And clearly, you don't, either. But you need to understand your nature before it kills you."

It clicked. Those who chose to walk away, bodies not adequate to contain them. A condition they shared, the way he had always looked like a priest yet claimed he wasn't. The near-constant sound of what her mind decided were wing beats. "Angels," Joss breathed. "You're talking about angels."

Both of them stared at Messenger. He hadn't said the word, she had, but it made sense. Everything he said about a conflict could be taken as allegory, everything he said after that indicated some kind of weird energy being out of a movie possessing a human vessel. He hadn't said anything about angels, or a Christian God, or anything to that effect but he had implied it with the sort of strength that Hallmark movies implied things about happily ever afters. It was all but laid out in plain speech.

Martine's hand closed over Joss's and gripped tight. Messenger didn't miss the gesture or its meaning, and sighed.

"You know the consequences of those kinds of choices."

Messenger got glared at for that. "I do now. I didn't then. And I still would choose no differently," Martine added, causing Joss to stare at him both for the word choice, his way of speaking different from how it had been even fifteen minutes earlier, and for the way he moved to her defense. "Joss and Alais have been by me through all of this, and if they choose to stand by me through what you've told me as well, then I can do no less for them, nor would I, nor will I."

"Nor would I ask you to," Messenger sighed. "Your feelings for these women have been made amply clear to me. Nor," he added, more gently this time and leaning forward out of earnestness or a desire to convince, it was hard to tell. He'd somehow gone from being a genial man of faith to the sort of enigmatic that usually came in spy form. "Nor should you. Love, devotion, loyalty, these are all things to be praised. Not rebuked."

"Then why are you rebuking?" Joss shot at him, her consonants going clipped and her tone more lilting again.

"I am only reminding him of what he has forgotten, that this is dangerous. What you two do is dangerous."

Another notch under the angel column. Even if she hadn't studied the Book of Enoch (in her free time where her mother couldn't see) she knew what pop culture said about the Nephilim, and she'd seen Wings of Desire and its lesser remake. "World hasn't ended so far." She sounded braver than she felt.

"Your child is not yet born. There is still time to correct this mistake."

And now it was safer to clench Martine's fingers and notice how warm his hands were around hers than think about either of those phrases. 'Child is not yet born' was bad enough. 'Correct this mistake' gave her horror pictures of cut open bellies and the sensation of blood and tissue slipping out between her legs.

"Mistake?" Martine rasped. "Mi-mistake?"

Her voice sounded strange to her ears. Like she was from the barrios of Los Angeles. "What are you talking about, _my_ child?"

"I don't... no, I don't believe it."

Martine snorted, fingers stilling for a second as they combed through her hair. They hadn't even made it to the bedroom yet, Joss not really sure her legs would hold her and he not up to making decisions just yet. Even decisions so basic as where to bed down for the moment.

"It just seems... it's impossible. For one thing. I mean, I know we've seen some impossible things, but that really has to be... and it's like it's disrespectful. Somehow, and did I mention I don't believe it? It's insane..." she grumbled, subsiding when she ran out of arguments to levy against the entire past fifteen minutes' worth of conversation. Her fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt and clung tight. She wasn't quite over the edge, yet, but she was getting there.

Martine had said very little since Messenger left. She wasn't sure how he felt about the man's revelations, on account of all she had to go on was the tension in his body and the rhythm of his heartbeat, his breathing.

"It's just crazy. I mean, everything he said, everything he talked about..."

"Here..." He sat up a little, pushed them both to sitting up. His face was smoothed, unmarred by tension or worry even if his voice and eyes were distant. He rasped a little. "No, here, you drink first." Tall plastic glass of water in her hand, and he wrapped her fingers around it and started to pull it gently up to her lips.

She made a face at him for that and began to drink. By the time she set the cup down it was mostly gone. She really had been thirsty.

"Told you."

"Shut up."

He laughed and let her finish her water in silence, trailing his fingers up and down along her upper arm. And when she set the glass down and blinked, trying to figure out what came next, he took her by the shoulders and tugged her to her feet, steering her towards the kitchen.

"This is some kind of role reversal, huh..." she murmured. It just now occurred to her that if she talked about this, she wasn't talking about that other thing that still freaked her out. Or thinking about it. Better not think about it.

Martine was more occupied with making sure the water pitcher was refilled and making sure her glass was full. "Hm?"

"You taking care of me. Usually we're the ones who have to take care of you."

He laughed, sliding an arm around her waist and kissing the top of her head. She liked that. She could burrow into him, drink her water. It made it seem like things were normal again. The worst they had to worry about was her finals, those last couple of papers and his next doctor's appointment, and that was all. The illusion persisted as long as they didn't say anything. Back to the couch with her third glass of water, his arm around her shoulders and the sun going down in a haze of dark golden dust motes floating over the couch.

She made him avoid that sunbeam specifically so that she didn't have to think about it. It was just a little bit too Hollywood. Or Hollyweird. One of the two.

By the time they were cuddled up on the couch again they felt back to normal. "You know, it ..."

"Hm?"

Under scrutiny she didn't want to say it. "It still doesn't feel true. Not to me." It obviously did to him or they wouldn't be talking about it like it was a possibility. "I mean, seriously. Isn't this kind of thing supposed to be all flash and explosions and people coming down with glowing and swords saying 'fear not'?"

Martine thought this over for a moment. "I blew up an MRI machine."

She punched him lightly on the shoulder. "You shorted out an MRI machine. Assuming it didn't short out by itself. Nyah." Joss stuck her tongue out at him, and they both laughed. It gave her enough momentum to continue into a different topic. "I kept having dreams, you know. About flying. People with wings."

He blinked at her. "Really?"

"No, not really. But wings. Like... you know exploding head syndrome? Or that thing with too many t's and n's, the one where you're hearing your ears ringing constantly? Like that, only with wings. Like there was this... bird. Knocking at a window in my head all the time. Sometimes it was worse, sometimes... not so much."

Martine's fingers curled into her hair, parting it over her neck and combing down each half. "You think that was..." He didn't finish. She didn't know what he meant to say, but she couldn't come up with the right combination of nouns and adjectives either.

"There was also... I had this dream, a couple nights ago? That I was pregnant." Joss shuddered, remembering it. The flies. And the eating. Chewing sounds.

"What happened?"

"There were these... flies. There was this swarm of flies, and they came down and they started eating me. And they ate me until..." Her fingers fluttered in front of her stomach, then splayed open. "All over the ground. And they started eating him. Or her. It. The..." Baby. Her baby. She still couldn't reconcile the two words in her head into a concept she understood. One thing to talk about it as a dream, but as a real concept that existed within her, not so much. "Anyway, it was... Gross. I'd way prefer more like the one where I got cut up in a bar fight."

"Cut up in a bar fight?" he almost laughed. "I can see that, you know."

"Shut up. This was one of those, patching myself up in a bathroom things. My face was all cut. It looked pretty badass." And pretty gross. Joss shuddered. "I'd take that over the man-eating flies, though."

"No one's going to do any eating of anyone. Or any getting cut up in bar fights. Nothing's going to get you, or him."

"Or her," Joss pointed out with a tiny, sickly smile.

Martine chuckled. "Or her."

She closed her eyes to think about that. Boy or girl. Choices, some that were hers to make and some that they'd find out when they got there. Her mother would have a fit. C-Section or natural birth. Epidural or, no, that wasn't a choice, she was having the damn baby in a damn hospital. Angels be ... She couldn't think that. But she was getting the damn epidural. Or whatever she could stand.

God, she was scared. Right that second, no matter how far off it seemed, she was scared of how much labor would hurt. "You think he was right?" Joss asked, lifting her gaze to him again.

"I don't know," he said, after kissing the top of her forehead and smoothing down her hair, smoothing his hands down her arms at least in part so that she didn't flail and hit him or hit her hand on the table. "I don't know what's going on, and I don't know if what he said is true or not. It seems like it fits? It feels right. But I still don't remember." He kept his hands on her arms as he spoke.

"What good is all that shit he told us, then?" she muttered. Her good mood was fading rapidly.

"It's a place to start, at least? It's kind of like more than we had when ... and I meant what I said, okay?" he shifted his grip and hugged her tighter around the waist, making her blink. She hadn't said anything. "I'm not going anywhere. I won't give this up, we've all worked too hard to make this right, and I don't want to give this up anyway."

"Oh." It took Joss a second to digest that. None of them talked very much about their feelings on the relationship, not after a few initial important discussions, mostly because said feelings had never really changed. At least, that was the impression she had of what was going on. But the circumstances had changed, hadn't they? So on the face of it it seemed reasonable for him to say that even if the circumstances had changed, his intentions hadn't, except that didn't sound quite right and she didn't have the energy to untangle it right now.

Joss pushed herself up a little to look at him, nudging away the glass of water he tried to press on her as soon as she sat up. "What if what Messenger said was true?" She made a face. "Oh christ. Messenger. I just realized."

Martine snorted. "Bad sense of humor. If what he said is true... so what? I still..."

"Not that part, the other part."

"... Oh." His arms tightened around her.

She looked down, one hand coming up to press against her lower abdomen even though she didn't, really didn't want to start making those kinds of stereotypical gestures. "Yeah. Oh."

By his silence, he didn't know what to do. Neither, really, did she.

Alais had a headache the whole way home, leaning her head against the glass. The rain started shortly after they left and the car ride turned into a litany of wiper sounds, splashing water, and the low voices of the radio. She leaned her head against the cool glass and watched the rain blur the scenes outside. Every now and again thunder rumbled staccato beats against the windows, deep enough not to bother her head. The energy of the storm raised the little hairs along her arm, fascinating and distracting her. Of course, by the time they got home, it was almost over and the sun was shining again. Mostly.

She went straight into the bedroom when they got home, dumping her bags in front of her closet and falling into the bed. Paula looked in on her once before she fell asleep, but she didn't remember what they said. Words to the effect of how are you and sleep well.

When she woke up everything was dark and gray, although all the lights were on. Alais made a mental note that the bulbs should be either changed or replaced.

"Hey..." Paula smiled, coming in to put away the folded laundry. "You're up. I thought you were going to sleep the rest of the day and through the night."

"No, I can't..." Alais heaved herself out of bed and stomped over to the closet, grabbing a heap of clothes before stomping off to the shower. "Too much to do."

Paula's voice trailed in after her a few seconds later. "Too much to do?" She didn't sound confused so much as worried. It took her a second to realize that Paula meant she was worried about Alais taking on too much regarding the current crisis rather than what the smaller blonde had actually meant she had to do.

"I need to talk to Martine again. He's probably sleeping, though." And she added a "stupid bastard" under her breath. Not meant for Paula's ears, although the heavier woman did come into the bathroom after a second and stand against the door, closing it behind her.

"What do you need to... about Messenger?"

Alais's eyes snapped open even against the water, though she abruptly closed them again. Dammit. Soap in her eyes, now. "About him, for starters." Messenger, that creepy bastard who kept hanging around. Self-righteous, arrogant prick. She did not like him hanging around any more than she liked Martine's current state of willful ignorance, though at least Messenger could be done for. If she had to. "About what he said, about all of it."

"That can wait till morning," Paula told her. Told, not asked, in a firm tone as though talking to a toddler. "You still need to rest. Probably everyone could do with a little rest."

She snorted, derision ringing through her tone. "I'm fine, mother. Besides, I have too much shit to do right now."

Paula made some kind of noise that never resolved itself into a word, stared at her for a second, then shook her head and went out. She was able to finish her shower in peace. And did so, bundling her hair up in a towel, staring at herself in the mirror for a second before throwing a robe on. She was still too tired and worn looking, hadn't eaten or slept well in the past few days, but that could be fixed easily enough.

When she went back out into the bedroom Paula was watching. Had obviously been pacing, and now had her arms folded over her chest, defensive posture. "Alais, are you sure you're all right? I mean, wouldn't you rather get some rest, go over in the morning?"

"Rather?" she snorted. "I would rather this situation be resolved as quickly as it can be. Hell, I'd rather it didn't exist at all, but apparently what I want doesn't count for much right now."

"What do you mean?" Paula asked. Defensive. "What are you talking about, what you want always counts... do you not want to..." Except she trailed off, and it sounded like she wasn't following.

"Idiot," she snapped, half to herself and half at Paula. "You really are such an idiot. And a crappy Catholic, too. Well, I guess you always were a crappy Catholic, what with the lesbian relationship with a woman who isn't even faithful to you..."

"Alais!"

"... but how in the world could you not know? How did you not notice? Joss I understand, she's young and she's the center of her own universe, always, but how did you not know?"

"I ... know..." Paula sputtered. Her face wobbled, lips pressed thinly together when she wasn't trying to babble, suppressing tears and failing at it, for the most part. "What are you talking about? Sweetie..."

"That. That's exactly what I'm talking about." She shook her head, throwing on her clothes and yanking the towel off her head when it got in the way. "Stupid. You know where this kind of behavior gets you, right? This kind of decadent, immoral, insolent..."

"I'm not going to talk to you while you're like this," Paula said, striding as quickly out of the room as she could without openly fleeing. A minute or two later she heard the front door close.

Her lips twitched for a second, and she shook her head. It had been far too easy to get under that woman's skin, and though most of what she said was a blatant lie, there had been enough truth to it in Paula's mind to sting. And that was where it counted.

She threw on the white blouse, black blazer over it. Something business-like, black slacks and blonde hair dripping down her back a little, but it would dry. She had work to do.

Paula didn't feel right about going to church, for the first time in a number of years. Everything that Alais had said, everything the other woman had accused her of still rang in her ears. Cheeks flushing hot, hair falling down around her face in a scattered mess, she trotted up the steps and took a seat in the back of the church, murmuring a quiet prayer over and over again until she could think at least a little bit clearly.

The bench was hard under the cushions under her backside, the kind of hard surface that was too narrow and still reassuring for all that it was uncomfortable. Reminding her of childhood Sundays spent swinging her heels under the bench, running her fingers along the surface of the bench in front of her. She did that again now, taller, but still finding comfort in tapping her fingers in slow rhythm along the polished and sanded wood rim.

There weren't that many people in the church. A couple volunteers, what looked like a group of people bent together in conversation over something or another, but few in number. It wasn't the right time for it, she supposed.

Which made it a little odd when someone came up and sat down beside her, a little ways to her right but still close enough that it was clearly deliberate. There was enough open space that he could have sat anywhere. Paula hunched over a little further automatically, feeling dirty and scummy and like her hair was frizzed and unwashed, like she didn't belong. Whoever it was didn't seem to either mind or maybe even notice. She tried to focus, but it was hard when she didn't even know what she should be focusing on. Her faith. Her connection to the Lord, but how was that possible when she didn't trust her judgment right now?

"You look sad, for being in a place of healing."

That voice came from next to her, warm and rumbling. Paula looked over the side of her shoulder for a second before ducking back down and focusing on the back of the pew two rows ahead.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," she said, pinching the bridge of her nose to cover a sniffle, lowering her head so that her hair fell over her face.

One solid, strong hand closed over her shoulder and she managed not to flinch somehow. "You don't sound fine. Would you like to talk about it?"

She lifted her head and looked at him, and there was something about him that reminded her of Messenger. And the calm about him, the way he had seemed like the sort of person one could confess to, confide in.

After the last couple of days she was a hell of a lot warier than anyone should be of people who behaved like that. Their open faces and their total focus on the person they were speaking to, it wasn't quite human. It was ludicrous and terrifying and intense and given that everyone she knew with the possible exception of Martine who was like that had brought nothing but trouble to her life she didn't want to confide in this person at all. Except for the part of her that did.

"I was told..." she said, through deep gulping breaths and trying to breathe and speak slowly enough to be clearly understood. "By someone who I have reason to trust and ... and believe." Paula couldn't quite bring herself to use the words 'care for' or anything like, yet. "That because of certain... lifestyle choices, I am a bad person. I am ... damned." She didn't know why she would hesitate to use that word in church, with a person of faith, after all. She wouldn't have to justify it or explain it. He knew what it meant.

"A friend or a relative?" the man frowned. "Or... ahhh... someone had second thoughts."

Something must have shown in her face; Paula shied away from that look of comprehension. "It wasn't that. It wasn't like that." It wasn't that Alais had had second thoughts, it couldn't have been. She hadn't said anything to the effect that Paula should get out of her life, for one thing.

"What was it like, then?" Half a challenge but also half a genuine query and request for explanation. She didn't understand why this stranger should be so interested.

Paula found herself pouring it all out anyway. How Alais had started becoming erratic and at first Paula had just put that down to what was happening with Martine, how things were strange there. The specifics and how they had worked out their relationship, how they'd only been dating for a couple of years. How their arrangement with Martine and Joss worked out. All the little details spilled out, one after the other in no particular order except how they connected in her mind. By the end of it all she was sobbing, tears pouring down in tacky trails over her cheeks.

The man offered her a handful of dusty tissues, which she accepted with slightly shamed gratitude. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm not usually this..."

"Upset?" his eyebrows arched. "It sounds to me as though you have a right to be upset. Your beloved is not herself, and she has said many hurtful things. If that isn't cause to be upset, well, I don't know what would be."

Paula looked over at him. In the space of two or three sentences he had gone from suspicious yet charismatic man to someone's kindly father, or perhaps grandfather. Most important to her shattered nerves at the moment, he didn't seem to be even blinking at her female lover.

"You don't believe... this is..." She couldn't quite bring herself to say it.

"Do I believe that it is wrong to celebrate love in whatever forms our Lord in his infinite wisdom chooses to bestow on us? No, I don't. He made us not to procreate, but to celebrate his divine love. To be sure, he created Adam and Eve, but in order to seed the earth with humanity and not as an instruction that we should all be in the same way forever and aye. And," he added, patting her hand. "If there is one thing that is plainly to be understood about our Lord and his works, it is that he loves wondrous variety."

That actually made Paula smile. Both because it was reassuring and because... "Morgan Freeman said that, didn't he? I saw that movie the other night."

He chuckled. "He did. He seems to make a habit of playing wise old men."

"Mmm." Morgan Freeman wasn't her thing. But it had made her smile, and Paula was a little surprised to find that there were indeed still smiles left in the day.

The man pulled out another tissue and handed it to her. "My opinion, which you are free of course to take as the unsolicited advice of a nosy old man, is that God loves us all when we are most ourselves. If what is true to your self is to love a woman, then God will love you as He made you, and not as some long-dead priest who lived in a different time and place would have you be. We hear the word of God through others, but we must also find it in ourselves and our own lives."

Paula nodded slightly. She'd heard that point of view before, but never quite in this context.

"And as for your lady love, if she is not behaving as herself and not happy in her life, perhaps it speaks to some trouble she is facing? And in that case, perhaps it is more in keeping with your faith to forgive her for her harsh words and help her as you can, rather than to question your own judgment."

"You think she needs my help?" Paula's eyebrows shot up. Not so much because she didn't believe he meant what he said, but Alais was always the self-confident one. It wasn't just an act, she really was that sure of herself and what she wanted, where she was going. At least, Paula had always thought so.

There was a pause while he seemed to look inward and struggle with his words, whether which ones he wanted or how to put them into a way she would understand. "I think that there are reasons why we act as we do, always reasons. And if she is tearing down, with no warning or apparent cause, what she has labored to build... she is sick in some way, and, yes, she needs help."

On the one hand, he didn't know Alais. He didn't know her certainty, how she moved and did everything with a kind of quiet confidence and pride in that. He didn't know how strongly she wanted what she wanted, felt what she felt. On the other hand, it wasn't unreasonable. It was the kind of conclusion anyone might draw, given what she had already blurted out. And she didn't know what to do.

"He never gives us what is not within our power to bear, Paula," the older man rubbed her shoulder a little, and she didn't even flinch at the familiarity. "I do believe that. If this is coming to you now and causing you to question your love or your faith, perhaps it is time for you to reconcile them both."

Paula opened her mouth, closed it again. Nodded, in the end. How long had it been since she had been to church? She had been thinking it'd been a while when she came in. "I... will try."

"Thank you," he said, smiling. "It's all He asks."

"Oh god. Oh, god, what's going on. Where did..."

Alais's hands were buried in her hair, tugging hard enough to pull it straight back away from her head, not hard enough to do more than ache. Up and down, up and down the bedroom, counting the steps. One two three four five six and turn and one two three...

"This can't be happening. This can't be happening. This is not happening."

 _Oh, shut up, you stupid whining whore._

Squinching her eyes shut tight against the face in the mirror and the voice in her head. She let go of her hair and closed her hands into fists and pressed them to her forehead, knuckles digging into her skull. Once upon a time the only voices in her head had been her own, and the worst she had to worry about was that they told her she was inadequate, or useless, or helpless.

This was more insidious. This was louder, illogical, could not be quieted by doing things or taking steps that her rational mind said were productive, this was a demon inside her mind.

 _Shut up. Shut up, you whore._

"Shut up!" she screamed. Threw something at the mirror and watched it shatter, listened to the glass crash down. What the neighbors must think of her she couldn't imagine.

 _Probably think you're crazy. 'cause you are._

"Shut up," she whimpered, sinking down and leaning back against the edge of the bed. The very big bed. The big, soon to be empty bed if Paula didn't come back tonight. And why should she? She'd given the other woman no reason to, and every reason to just leave.

Alais took a couple of deep, gulping breaths, then got up and bolted for the kitchen. Either to throw up or to pour herself a big glass of water, she wasn't sure which. It ended up being the water, which was preferable to the taste of bile and half-digested food, but that didn't stop the nausea.

She was too messed up in the head to think about the implications of this, about anything other than what she'd just now said and done, and that was bad. That meant that she couldn't explain to anyone what had been going on, what had been happening to her and around her for how long, now? How long had this voice been sitting in her head getting more and more poisonous until it came out her lips and now she was the voice itself, or vice versa? And now, the final cap on the jar of sorrows, she was thinking of herself as crazy, as messed up in the head. Only in ways no therapist or mind-altering drug could fix.

"Talking to yourself. Bad sign. Crazy people talk to themselves, you know that, right? Of course you do. Just like this, too."

That was her voice, all right. That was her lips shaping words, but they weren't her words, they were someone else's words. Like all those bad horror movies about puppet masters.

She wasn't talking to herself because that wasn't her talking. It was her breath being used to shape the words that were made with her mouth but it wasn't her talking. She had not exercised the will to move her body in that fashion. She knew that as a fact, but now she didn't know how to explain what was happening to her. What had happened to her. Joss should know, she should tell Joss, except she didn't want to burden her with Martine already being sick, and, oh god. Martine. What had happened with that? With him? She remembered, vaguely, something to do with the hospital and a test or a scan they were going to work up but it was all so hazy.

"That's because you're stupid," her voice told her.

 _Shut up_ , she told it.

She needed to get a grip on herself. Somehow she needed to make a phone call, make a couple of phone calls, tell Joss that something was very very wrong and then call a hospital and have herself picked up. For evaluation, treatment, maybe confinement. Actually, confinement sounded like the best plan right now.

Alais tried to push herself off of the counter and walk to the phone, and she couldn't. Her body stayed there, even shifted position to lounge against the surface like she was waiting for someone to come and bend her backwards over it, legs in the air, ready for plowing. Knees bent and open, she felt overripe and used and she didn't like it, wanted this thing out of her body.

It was becoming more and more like an invader, a nest of parasitic worms crawling under her skin. It was the only way she could think of to describe it.

 _Get out of my body!_

"Why? I kind of like it here..." The worms ran her hands over her body, down to her hips and up under her breasts, cupping them and thumbing her nipples a little. She felt them harden and squirmed inside her body with shame. "You guys have all the fun."

Alais didn't have words. She didn't have thoughts, she had hysterical gulping sobs without breath or tears to express them as her body's fingers undid the fastenings on her clothes, as her body bent, naked, to look into the fridge. Then into the freezer.

First, there was the beer. Thankfully only two beers, she could handle two beers, had before, but after the beers were empty there was the last of a box of chocolates she'd brought back over from a brief stop in Spain, and that was when the ice cubes came out. Her body held one between her lower lips and rubbed it all over till physical pleasure had become numbed pain, and she wasn't, she was sure she shouldn't have been taking pleasure to begin with but then it just hurt. And all the while a steady stream of chatter, wondering, would her girlfriend like her this way. Maybe she should get all of them into bed. Did she like being such a slut because it felt good because having the neck of a beer bottle crammed all the way up her slot didn't feel all that good. Cock had felt better.

And that sent Alais over the edge, because why had this thing invaded her private moments, why? In the space of a few minutes all her secret moments had been violated, the quiet and the comfortable moments with Paula, with Martine. Lovemaking on the wide, low bed with the moon shining in, curling up with her beautiful girl, everything. Made sordid and dirty. And inside the voice laughed as Alais tried to beat her fists against the mirrored surface of the bathroom, but her body only stepped into the waiting shower and let the water beat down.

"I think ... yeah. Maybe the handle of..."

Alais fled to the farthest point of her mind she could think of, praying that whatever was in her body would be merciful and leave her a body when it was done with her.

Martine was at work, and this time he was at the actual building where his work was located. It was the first time at least since Joss had hooked up with him that that had happened. Alais had known him just at the edges of his time there, and by the time Joss met him and they'd started dating he was working from home, for which she was glad. It made her nervous enough to have him driving even as little as he did. Running errands or running her to school sometimes while suffering migraines or strange visions.

Which were now somewhat less strange even with all of that, but still something to be wary of when he was behind the wheel of a car.

And yet, he also had to account for his absences to work, which meant getting behind the wheel of a car. They didn't talk about this stuff in the movies, or in the trashy fantasy novels she read sometimes. Someone would swoop along, teach Martine how to use his fancy new magic powers, and he'd just teleport to work. Or he wouldn't need to work, the universe would just provide everything they needed.

"Yeah, this is the really real world," Joss muttered. Except she wasn't sure what that even meant anymore. Which was what happened when stupid strangers came out of nowhere and told you stupid shit that just happened to be true. She thought something rude in Spanish in his general direction.

And felt queasy a moment later, as if in retaliation.

"Shut up, body," she told herself. "That's not helpful."

And anyway, wasn't pregnancy supposed to involve morning sickness? In the morning? This wasn't morning sickness, this was random queasiness at varying times all throughout the day sickness, although she supposed she should be grateful she'd only gotten as far as vomiting once. She grabbed the edges of the kitchen island and leaned against it until the feeling passed, then went on to get her glass of water, which had been the original intention.

On her second glass she hesitated and stared down through the bottom of it. This was just helping her headache, keeping her hydrated. Mint was good for queasiness, and while they didn't have the candy form there were at least three different boxes of mint tea floating around. Joss poured a third glass of water while she set the kettle to boil for tea. Small movements, one thing at a time, one task at a time and she could do this without throwing up into the sink. Or thinking of throwing up into the sink, which drew her mind to how hard it would be to wash it down the disposal and all the chunks of whatever she'd been eating washed clean against the metal and the stink of bile in the air. And, okay, now she was bolting to the bathroom. Never, she reminded herself, think about throwing up like that when your imagination is in overdrive and you're nauseous.

Joss flushed it all away and leaned her forehead on the cool wet ceramic, trying not to breathe too deeply and to clear her mind at the same time. This had to be at least partly from nerves, from being upset with everything that had happened. Finding out she was pregnant, finding out her boyfriend wasn't what he appeared to be, in more than just he was actually a spy or a special forces assassin type thing. Finding out that the world wasn't what she thought it was.

Well, gravity still worked, and so did the plumbing. And so did thermodynamics, since the kettle was now shrieking.

Her face in the shiny surface of the kettle was pale and distorted. Well, the pale was probably from throwing up and so on. The distortion was a little off-putting. She shook her head, poured the tea as carefully as she could manage with the dizziness that was now resulting from the whole vomiting thing. Wouldn't do to splash herself with boiling water.

"Although with my luck, that's exactly what will happen."

And now she was talking to herself. Hopefully Martine would come back soon.

Joss went to the couch with her tea, curling up on it and tucking her feet under the cushions again to keep them warm.

The only problem with mint tea was that it made her sleepy as well as soothing her nausea. Being awake enough to be aware of what she was doing, how she was drifting off, was at least enough to let her set the half-empty cup down on the table. She should have been doing schoolwork. There were papers to write, to research, tests to study for. Notes to go over.

She reached over for the notebook and papers she'd left on the table, but reading them made no sense and she had to put them down. Maybe it was time to go to sleep. The rain was starting to fall down the windows in sheets and a wind was picking up, but that just gave her a white noise cushion on which to rest her head and close her eyes. Listening to the wind and the trees smacking against the windows was nice, at least. It gave her something to concentrate on and soothe her mind with not having to think too much.

That wasn't branches, she thought. Had a bird gotten into the apartment when she wasn't looking?

It felt as though she'd been asleep for hours. The sky outside was gray and almost blank with how overcast it had gotten. There were no birds in the room, the sounds must have been the branches scraping against the windows. Which didn't at all sound like wing-beats.

Any other time Joss would have dismissed it, but now she knew better. Or more, if not better. What with everything that had been said and some of the things that she'd been a part of.

And with the little warning voice inside her mind. It felt as though it was coming through her dreams, maybe her mind putting pieces together without realizing it, maybe just the weird supernatural ambiance that kept hanging around the apartment like last night's party. She had the feeling that something was very wrong, and while she might have dismissed it a week ago, today she was feeling more like listening to it and grabbing a kitchen knife while the apartment creaked around her.

The knock at the door made her yelp. And then the knob turning and something clicking in the lock a second after that. Just before the door opened she realized it must have been more of a letting people know someone was coming in knock, not a knock for entrance.

"He's not in," she called, putting the knife back in the block. "It's okay."

The door creaked open more normally, and Alais dropped her bag with a sigh. "Good," she said. "I was afraid I would have to fight him for this."

... What?

"Alais?" Joss came around through the kitchen and to the doorway, leaning a bit against the kitchen counter, then the couch, then the table. "What are you..."

"Nothing, just leftovers, it doesn't matter. Are you all right?"

Alais met her halfway there, and it was probably a good thing because the room was starting to spin around her. Dizziness as well as nausea, and the blood rushing through her head making a fluttering kind of pounding against her temples. Joss shook her head, careful not to spill her brains or the tea she'd had a little while ago. Or think about that too much. "I'm not sure. I think I came down with something..." She didn't want to tell Alais about the baby. Maybe in case she didn't decide to keep it, although the fact that she was thinking about it as 'the baby' rather than 'the pregnancy' should have said something. But she didn't want to tell Alais about the baby. Because some instinct stopped her, twisted a chill around her spine until she said nothing at all.

Alais took her by the shoulders and sat her back down on the couch. "Are you... oh, you are," she picked up the cup and sniffed it. "Mint. Are you that nauseous...?"

Joss shook her head. "Not very. But I was drinking a lot of water and I figured this would probably be more helpful."

"You're probably right. Are you sick? Do you need me to go to the store for you?" She waited until Joss had settled herself into the couch again before perching on the arm and stroking her hair. Joss closed her eyes to enjoy it.

"I don't think so. I don't think there's much I can do but wait it out. It'll pass soon, anyway." Not that soon. Nine months, or that was how it went, anyway. She'd have to go see a doctor for one of those pre-natal checkups. If what she was pregnant with could even be helped by a normal doctor.

Alais nodded. For another second or two she stroked her hair and Joss stroked along her knee, cheek pressed to the pillow. She thought her stomach might be settling.

"Do you think it's something you could give to Martine?" she asked.

Joss almost choked with laughing. "Ah, no. No, I really don't think I can give this to him..."

"...Hmm?"

Shit. She shook her head. "Nothing..."

Alais sat up a little straighter, pulling her hand away from Joss's hair. "That didn't sound like nothing. Are you sure you're all right?"

She didn't want to tell Alais. The other woman deserved to know, but she didn't feel comfortable talking about it just yet. Hell, she didn't feel comfortable thinking about it, talking it over with anyone. She didn't want to deal with it until she was ready.

Their child had a different timeline, though. There was no 'ready', there was only what was.

Joss scrubbed her hand over her eyes and sighed. Whatever fear had overtaken her earlier was gone now. "I'm pregnant. We... I... um. That whole thing about..." There was no explanation good enough to give. She shook her head, eventually. "I don't know. Best I can figure is that a condom slipped, or broke, or something, and we just didn't catch it. It wasn't like this. I mean, it wasn't... We didn't... plan..."

She looked up at Alais, who had slipped down from the arm of the couch and was now staring at her in shock and, she thought, betrayal. Something unhappy, something that darkened her eyes and twisted her mouth into a scowl. "You're..."

"Yeah."

Alais turned to pace along the wall, frowning. Almost muttering to herself by the sound of it, but Joss couldn't catch what she was saying and got up to see and hear better. "Did you..." Alais started, then shook her head and kept pacing.

"We were careful! We've always been careful, I just, I have no idea what could have happened." The nausea was gone but the headache remained. "Look, I ..."

The words stuck in her throat. Alais stared at her, eyes wide and angry, her delicate and manicured hands clenching into fists. She didn't know what the older woman wanted or what she meant by that look. The world seemed to tilt sideways around her and she had no idea what was going on, but the feeling of foreboding was back and she took a step backwards to try and figure things out.

"You have no idea what you've done, do you?" Alais rasped out. "You don't know what it is you... you have no _fucking_ clue!"

That was the first one, though. That was Joss's first clue that something wasn't right, and if it showed on her face she tried to make it not obvious. Nor the fact that she was backing up towards the kitchen again. "What... Alais." Calm voice. Super-calm. Breathing deep and even, taking slow steps and deliberate movements, her back so tight it was starting to hurt around her shoulders. "What are you talking about? You're right, I don't understand... please explain it to me?" She sounded like a therapist, Christ.

"You shouldn't be having this child, that's what I'm talking about!" Alais yelled, throwing her arms up in the air. "You shouldn't... you're not supposed to have children!"

That made no sense. "That makes no sense," Joss said, trying to think of something in the kitchen she could use to defend herself, just in case. Something that didn't come from the knife block. Maybe the knife block. "What are you..."

"You..." Alais pointed a finger at her, coming in close. "You, you're the one who's fucking this up. You're the one, he's always focused on you, all of it, always about you, he can't fucking see what's really going on because you're there. You've screwed it all up!"

One of her hands flew into the fridge door while she was gesturing, but she didn't seem to care. It was like she was on drugs, high on something, and Joss was seriously scared and wondering if she should have been backing up towards the phone instead of looking for a weapon. She was too confrontational sometimes, that was the problem. "Whatever it is, I'm sure we can fix it." Whatever she thought it was, but that was too patronizing, wouldn't sound right.

"Oh, I'll fix it," she said, and that was when everything stopped.

No, it didn't really, but it felt like it did. She saw Alais's hand reach for the knife on the butcher's block. The same knife she'd been about to use on Alais or at least to threaten her with. Someone had a strange sense of humor. Joss saw Alais lean forward, lunge forward with the knife and leaned back in time, she thought. She saw her own hand shoot up, dark gold against the fairer woman's skin, grab her wrist and slam it against the edge of the counter, two times.

Alais yelled, dropped the knife and bent over her wrist. "You stupid _bitch_!"

The hell with that. Joss ran, tried to get out of the apartment, and Alais tackled her on the way to the door, bouncing both of them off the couch. She kicked back, elbowed backwards as hard as she could, her head bounced off the arm of the couch. They lurched forward to the coffee table and then she saw the television coming up to her face and the light coming through the window made it look red and orange, and she threw herself backwards to avoid getting smashed into the glass. Alais's arms went slack for a moment, and that was the moment she took to leap over the corner of the coffee table and run out the door. No looking back, no stopping, that was how the monsters in all those horror movies found you. Just running, out the door and down to the street in her bare feet and blue jeans, trying to get away.

He knew this. He knew what happened next. She'd told him, Joss had told him about this, about her dream and her cut face, but with all the dreams about wings and babies he figured it was just her mind conjuring up another nightmare. "Should have known better."

Glass everywhere, blood, signs of a struggle as they said on TV. Martine wouldn't have believed it if Joss hadn't got called and babbled out what happened. Her account matched what looked like had happened, but he wasn't sure he was prepared to believe that Alais had done it. Except the whole throwing Joss into a cabinet thing. That had happened. He was tired of unbelievable things happening, tired of worrying about his girls.

He didn't have time to take the car. With the bike he could take roads less available, drive on the shoulder, on the sidewalk if he had to. It also would make a greater impression and in that area of town, he wanted to make the impression that no one would mess with him. The headaches were fading, or at least it felt like they were, it would be safe enough to drive the bike. He still didn't know where he'd gotten it.

Keys. Cleaning up the mess, that could wait until he'd gotten Joss back safe and sound, maybe to a hospital first. Finding Alais could also wait, whatever had a hold of her wouldn't let her hurt herself, he was sure of that. He didn't know what it was, but he was pretty sure.

He ran into Messenger when he was going down to the parking lot. "I'm busy," he told him straight off, before the other man -- or whatever he was -- could say anything.

"What happened?"

"Alais attacked Joss. She's hurt, she ran to some biker bar, took the bus to the edge of town, I think. I think I know where it is. I'll find her..." In case Messenger was in doubt, Martine told him again, with certainty and some finger pointing.

"I know you will," Messenger said quietly. "The child will draw you to her, if nothing else. It may not yet be alive in the same sense that a human child is not yet alive, but the potential of the child alone will draw you. And..."

Martine shied away from what that would mean, resolved not to tell Joss in case she made some decision because of it. "And?"

"And... nothing. And nothing," Messenger shook his head, waved whatever it was away. "I do ... I cannot say that I approve of what you've done. It is unwise, to say the least, and the likelihood that it will end well is not good at all. But you do love each other, and you are being as sensible as you can be under the circumstances."

It sounded as though it cost him a lot to say that. And as though he didn't entirely believe what he was saying, but Martine was too impatient and irritated and worried to care about any of that. And he wasn't sure he believed everything that Messenger had to say about the circumstances in any case. "Thanks," he told him dryly, climbing on the bike and starting it. "Don't go anywhere, all right? I still want to talk to you..."

About some things. He didn't know what they were, but he knew he wanted to talk to him. He'd think about it later.

"Helmet," Messenger reminded him.

Martine glared at him as he jammed his helmet onto his head and roared off.

Joss was outside, barefoot and with the house shawl wrapped around her head, tissues stuffed against her cheek when he came up. She looked somewhere between composed and on the edge of hysteria, like a horror movie veteran of three sequels and twice as many zombie hordes. "Martine!"

He swung off the bike and came towards her as quickly as he could without running her over. She was barefoot on the gravel, too. Hopefully it was just gravel and not bits of broken glass. She turned towards him and he caught her by the shoulders, looking her up and down. "Are you... all right? Joss, are you..." He plucked at her shawl, at the tissues on her cheek, trying to see how bad it was.

"I'm all right," she caught his hand and moved it away, and he didn't want to fight her on it. "I'm all right, I'm okay."

"No, you're not, don't be absurd. You're bleeding..." He tugged the shawl off, her hair tumbling wild around her face. The wind picked up bits of the tissue and started pulling it away almost as fast as he could, exposing the ragged edges of flesh, muscle, little yellow flecks. "Jesu..."

"Martine."

"Sorry." He shook his head and tugged her back to the bike, determined to get her somewhere that could help her. A hospital, a clinic, something. He barely noticed her weaving and skidding on the gravel behind him.

"Martine! _Joder_..." she muttered, breathless.

He swore to himself as he turned around; he'd already forgotten about her lack of shoes, let alone everything else. How much blood had she lost? He turned and scooped her into his arms, or tried to. It ended up being her more collapsed against him, fingers curled tight in her shirt while she was dead weight in his arms, even for half a minute or two. "Joss..." he wasn't sure what to do, shaking her seemed to be out of the question. Could she have lost enough blood from that one cut to be passing out like this, or was it the shock? Or was she otherwise injured, or was it the pregnancy... "Come on, wake up, Joss, I need you to hang on long enough to get to a hospital or something. Come on. Come on back to me. Joss, speak to me, please..."

Her fingers curled tight in the edge of his jacket. "I need," she rasped, "Stitches. I need. A doctor. You idiot."

All right, if she was well enough to be grumpy at him, she was at least doing well enough to get home, to a doctor, wherever. "Come on. We'll get you to a doctor, we'll get you..." Not a hospital. But maybe a doctor could come to them, to the apartment.

Or maybe Messenger could help. There were supposed to be things he could do, that Daniel could do. It wasn't even that bad, was it?

"We'll get you stitches, just, come on. Stay with me long enough to get home, okay? Or somewhere. We need to get you shoes..."

Joss blinked as though she'd forgotten all about her bare feet. That wasn't a good sign. He rubbed her arms a little; cold as she was, she'd probably need the jacket more than he would, so he draped it around her shoulders and tried to put her arms into it like a child. She glared at him, yanked her arms away and stuffed them into the sleeves.

"Okay?"

"Okay," he nodded, smiling a little. Somehow. "Come on, let's get going."

"I don't believe she's otherwise injured, just scared and in shock and yes, the pregnancy did not help."

They'd put Joss to bed, albeit with some argument. The argument was actually reassuring, it meant that she wasn't frightened or tired or injured enough to be completely robbed of spirit. It could have been worse, by the look of things. A lot worse.

They put what they could to rights, cleaned up the broken glass and straightened everything. It look less time than he expected, somehow. Maybe it just looked worse than it was because it was Joss's blood, and Joss and Alais who'd crashed into the TV and the coffee table and left the bloody knife on the floor.

"You wanted to talk, so talk," Martine folded his arms. "But first I want to ask you a few things. How do you expect me, us, to believe any of this? How do you expect us to believe what you say is going on when all we have are..."

He didn't get a chance to finish. The lights dimmed, more outside than inside although even the electric lights seemed to fade, as though everything in the room were taking a deep breath. And the exhale came in the shadows of wings and the pounding of wing-beats in dull thuds on the window, on the couch, and against his temples. Messenger himself did nothing, didn't sprout wings, didn't change form. His eyes didn't even glow. But Martine stepped back out of the narrow gap between the coffee table and the couch, without realizing it, putting himself between the door to the bedroom and Joss, and Daniel Messenger.

The other man saw it, or whatever he was. "I don't mean her any harm, Martine. But you'll have to accept it, this is what you are. She is human, and you are not. That is not something you can or ever will be able to change."

He didn't like the sound of that. Didn't want to argue, but he didn't like the sound of it regardless. "I thought you said..."

"I said it was unwise, and I believe it is. I said you were being as sensible as you could be, which isn't much. You're ... you do not mingle, you do not fraternize with humans, not this way. You certainly don't have children with them."

"Keep your voice down," he hissed. Daniel hadn't raised his voice but Martine still didn't feel comfortable with it. "What, because the last time this happened we created a race of inhuman giants? That's folklore. According to you, at least, the way you talk about all of this it doesn't have anything to do with what's been written."

"There is a basis in truth," Daniel told him.

"And that's different. That..."

"Different? How? You took up with a human woman. You got her with child..."

Martine shook his head. "That was lust. This is..."

"Love? You think this makes you different because you think you're in love? This doesn't make you different, this makes you stupid. Love is a magical force only in fairy tales and stories they tell young men and women to make them believe it is worth pursuing. It doesn't grant you any special powers or dispensations."

They stared at each other. It was more than Martine had expected, it was more vehement, almost more normal (or maybe human) than he had seen the other man be thus far.

"I think..." Martine said slowly. "That of all the reasons to be with a woman, or a man," he added, watching Messenger's reaction. Which was no reaction at all. "I think that love is one of the better ones. I think that we're being as responsible as we can be. We didn't exactly mean for this to happen, we weren't careless." They hadn't been, either. They wouldn't have been even if they'd known.

Messenger shook his head, but it was more rueful and tired than still angry. "Do you know of any method of contraception that is always, 100% reliable?"

"Don't. Don't start with that abstinence ..." he shook his head too, but stopped as the corner of Messenger's mouth twitched up.

"So, does this mean you believe?"

He looked over his shoulder at Joss. It explained so much, and yet it didn't explain everything. And it didn't provide any kind of exclusivity on what had been happening; everything else could have a mundane cause. Except for the special effects display on cue. "Qualified belief. I haven't any memories, so don't get your hopes up." Daniel nodded anyway. Qualified belief seemed to be good enough for the moment. "She's been having nightmares. Does that have anything to do with it?"

"Nightmares... battles, family fights, absent parental figures? Conflict between two worlds and so on? Being torn between aspects... things like that?"

"I think so..."

Messenger nodded. "The child is influencing her dreams, the part of you that is mingling with a part of her. Genetic memory is the human term, I believe; it's not quite accurate but it's close enough. As the child comes to awareness and life it'll only get worse."

Martine winced. Joss wasn't going to like that. "Is there anything we can do?"

"Other than the solution your doctors present? No. It must be endured until the child is born."

Messenger had no pity in his voice for her, which Martine supposed shouldn't surprise him. Not with his amply expressed disapproval. When he didn't say anything the other man continued.

"I see you're starting to apply yourself to maintaining this form. That's good. You're going to need all your faculties and everything you can manage to survive this."

Martine's body tensed, shoulders back, standing light on his feet without realizing it. Ready for a fight. "What do you mean, survive this?"

"I'd kind of like to know, too," came her voice from behind his right shoulder.

She hadn't heard much of the conversation. They'd put her to bed, and she did acknowledge to herself at least that it was the better plan. After several minutes of trying to fall asleep and being too wired on adrenaline and the action packed insanity that had become her life, she gave up. No, she didn't want to get into the conversation between the two of them. But she did come out into the room enough to hear that last part. Survive this. She'd already survived enough, she felt.

Joss folded her arms and stared between the two men. Martine had that shoulder-hunched hands in pockets look when he was trying not to feel guilty of something, regardless of whether or not he had anything to feel guilty for. Messenger was more stoic and unreadable than usual, but he also radiated less confidence. It didn't hit her until she didn't feel it anymore, but he must have been projecting some kind of aura that made her want to like him and trust him. That wasn't the case now. She kind of wanted to punch him.

"What do you mean, survive this?" she repeated Martine's question, harder and angrier. "You can't just start a sentence like that and..."

"I think I know what's happening to your friend. What made her attack you like that."

Both of them stared at him. This time Joss was the one who interposed herself between Martine and Messenger. "Explain."

"I believe she is... your folklore has them as our opposite number, but they're not. They're similar, but nothing so concrete as opposites. This one is malevolent. It hates Martine for some reason only it knows or understands and it wants to destroy him."

It had wanted something, anyway, although that didn't sound right. Not with what the thing in Alais had said. And part of Joss couldn't believe she was taking this at face value, this possession nonsense, but it made sense. In a warped kind of a way. The same way everything else made sense. If Martine wasn't human, it opened the door to all kinds of other things, and if he was special, he might draw other creatures that were special as well.

And it made sense in the context of what Alais, or not-Alais, had been saying. She just didn't know what it was that she was supposed to have screwed up for her, if the creature was a her.

"It recognized him. I think ..." She turned, spoke more to Martine than to Messenger. "I think you were supposed to recognize it back."

"How am I supposed to recognize it when I don't remember a damn thing?" he snapped, but subsided when she stepped forward and laid a hand on his arm. "Sorry. I'm sorry, Joss, I..."

She ducked under his arm and settled against his side, ignoring the thunderous disapproval radiating from Messenger with as much force as he'd radiated 'trust me' vibes a few days ago. "It's okay. It's okay, we're all... under stress. Under pressure." She could still feel the ache in her cheek, the echo of the shock of staring at herself in the mirror. And she wondered how long it would be before she could even do something so mundane again.

"Something needs to be done about your friend and that creature in her, pressure or no pressure," Messenger insisted, and Joss glared over at him for interrupting and for being pushy. "Whether or not you like it, she is under the control of..."

"Of one of your kind, I know," Joss snapped. She'd had enough, and part of her was reacting and choosing the most hurtful words she could think of on instinct. "Us puny, pitiful humans wandering around and getting jumped, ridden, and manipulated by you people. Because none of you are smart enough to leave us the hell alone."

Messenger even took a step back at her vehemence. Even Martine probably would have, if she hadn't been holding onto him. "Joss..." he started.

"I don't think..." Daniel tried to say at the same time.

Joss ran right over him. "No, you don't think. None of you think. We're just your pitiful little playground, your place to run to and stick your head in the sand and hide when shit gets too heavy wherever it is you come from, whatever you are. I don't think I believe that, anyway, that's all bullshit. You could be aliens or... or whatever, I don't care, but you people need to learn to have some fucking respect."

Neither man said anything. Martine was staring openly at her use of bad language.

"This isn't your world. This isn't your home. You don't come into someone's home as a guest and start dicking around and breaking the glassware and the furniture. And if you're not going to treat the people who live here with respect, then goddamnit, we're not entitled to do the same to you. That thing is getting evicted, and you can either help or get the hell out of our lives and out of my way..." And that was when she sort of lost momentum, because she was starting to realize how incoherent she'd gotten. "She's my friend. She's our friend, and no, I don't like what's being done to her, but if you don't quit sounding like it's either do something drastic or outright kill her I will punch you in your smug little face."

"Joss..." Martine reproved. Too late, and she knew that had to be deliberate, because all he would have had to do was speak up to interrupt her and get her to stop ranting. His hand rubbed over her shoulder and upper arm, and when he kissed her shoulder she felt the smile.

Messenger still looked daunted. At the very least. "I didn't mean..."

"Yes, you did," Martine said over her shoulder. Joss felt her lips stretch into a smug little grin. "And if you had some faith in me, and in the people I've chosen to surround myself with, you would have known better than to suggest any such thing. Isn't faith part of what we're supposed to be about? One of the great virtues, and all that?"

To her surprise, Daniel Messenger's lips quirked up in a tiny, but real smile. "So it is. My apologies, to you, Miss Rodriguez." He even bowed. Joss resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "So, what is it you want to do, then?"

Joss had opened her mouth to respond when the door banged open. No click of the deadbolt, no sound of the key in the lock to warn them. That was her first clue that something was wrong. The second was how misshapen Alais's face looked. It wasn't anything so obvious as black eyes or an elongated face, nothing like in the movies. But she looked wrong, just plain wrong, and nothing anyone else could say would convince her otherwise.

"You," not-Alais snarled, looking first at Messenger. "What the hell are you doing here."

At least no one commented on a potentially ironic turn of phrase.

"Leave this place," Messenger said, the first time Joss had seen him either scowl or look angry. "Leave the woman you are wearing and this place and do not look..."

"Or you'll what?" Alais's laugh sounded ugly, too. A horrible parody of Alais's real, joyful laugh that made Joss both want to throw up and hit the person inside of her. Which she couldn't do without hitting Alais, and that pissed her off even more.

Even so, she stepped between Martine and the creature wearing his girlfriend's body, just in case. She'd be more willing to knock the other woman around than he would. Joss was more belligerent and assertive than either of the other two. More aggressive, half the time. More capable, she was still used to thinking of herself as more capable even though the past few days Martine had been the one whole and healthy and she'd been the one hanging over toilets puking her guts up.

"And you. Don't have a clue what this is about, do you?" Now she was pointing at Martine. Laughing, that kind of exasperated tired laugh. "They still haven't told you. They still haven't fucking told you, after all this..."

The door banged open again. Joss twitched, dropped into a crouch more learned from martial arts movies than from martial arts teachers, but it was a stable enough stance that she figured she could throw a punch if she had to. Or run. Running was probably likelier. And safer.

Paula looked like she wanted to run up to Alais, but didn't dare. Behind her was another stranger, a familiar stranger although the inherently contradictory concept didn't make any sense, another tall, dark, pale man in a trenchcoat. It hadn't struck Joss until this man entered the picture how like brothers all three of them looked. Like some kind of family unit. What was going on here?

"Oh great. The gang's all here."

Joss couldn't tell if that confirmed her theory or was just the thing's way of being snarky. "That's right. All of us against one of you, do you really like those odds?"

Behind Alais, or not-Alais, Paula was hissing for her to shut up. Belatedly, Joss did. And it was too late, Alais was already focused on Joss again, sneering at her. "Yeah, three old ineffectual bastards who'd rather stroke themselves off than fight, one cowardly little dyke ho, and one fat pregnant chick."

Joss and Paula exchanged a completely confused look. _Fat?_ Joss mouthed at her.

 _Pregnant?_ Paula mouthed back.

"You screwed it all up. He was supposed to remember me, remember everything. I spent years tracking him down, finding him, setting this up! Do you know how long I spent, setting this up, finding out how to get ahold of him? Figuring this out? Do you know how much fucking effort it was to get him this far?"

Oh, now Joss really wanted to punch her. "You didn't do a fucking thing," she said, even though she wasn't sure how true that was. How much of Alais had been with Martine, and how much of Martine had been affected by Alais and how much had been affected by the creature inside her. "You didn't do a damn thing. You stood by, you sat there in your little... whatever you were in, you sat back and you let us do the work. We stood by him, we carried him. He doesn't know you, and maybe he shouldn't..."

Okay, that was dangerous. She realized that when Alais lunged for her, that it had been a mistake. Rather than step aside though she leaned in and used Alais's momentum to run the other woman into her fist.

Alais went berserk. Or rather, the thing inside of her went berserk. Hands clutched at her wrists and the room grew dim, and something tried to force itself down her throat. She heard voices calling out, as though from a long ways away or underwater. Martine's voice, Paula's. Messenger's, and another's that must have been the other man's. The smoke tasted like nicotine and felt like tar and oil down her throat and, of all places, in her ears. Blocking everything.

She coughed when she was finally released. "Fucking hell..." she mumbled. Since everyone seemed to be cursing tonight. "What was that?"

"You stupid bitch," Alais laughed, or shrieked, or both. Messenger had both hands behind her back. "You stupid, stupid whore. You spread your legs and got his seed and now you got his abomination growing in your belly..."

This time, Martine threw the punch.

It was a decent punch except he held back too much. He couldn't hit Alais, not entirely, not when he loved her as much as he did. He stepped in front of Joss when he did, though, and Alais laughed at him for it.

"Cute. Leaping to her defense. Knight in paper armor, you are." She moved to hit him back and Joss pulled Martine back by the arm, hissing something. She didn't even know what. Something rude.

There was a slight movement out of the corner of her eye, the stranger stepping in front of Paula, hands spread as if to get ready for a fight. They had a fight on their hands, yeah, but she wasn't sure who was fighting whom or who was equipped for it. Martine looked like a stiff breeze would knock him over and he was standing in front of her. Trying to protect her. It was cute. If Alais had said that bit about him being a knight in paper armor she would have agreed with her. Because they would have said it with love and tenderness.

Instead Joss backed up against the tables and the wall, reaching for something to use as a weapon. She didn't know what Alais had done to her. But damned if she was going to let that thing inside of her get a second shot at it. "You leave him alone," she hissed at it. "You leave him alone, you leave all of us alone. You get the hell out of her and you go back to wherever it is..."

"Or you'll what?" she laughed, and took another step towards her and Martine.

Messenger's hand closed on her shoulder, and she screamed.

It took Joss a second to realize what that sound reminded her of. It was an angry, vibrating sound, high pitched, and then she remembered where she'd heard it before, walking around in the park in the early mornings. It sounded like a squirrel scream. Of all things. Or some kind of really high pitched bird. It took a second before she realized the scream was deafening her and she threw the vase right as Messenger clapped his hand over her mouth.

"Ow!"

Whatever he was doing, it stopped. And so did the screaming.

Of course, that meant Alais was free to grab him and throw him over her shoulder at both Joss and Martine. He hit the wall, fell onto the table and went rolling onto the floor.

"Isn't the table supposed to break?" Joss mumbled. For some reason her brain wouldn't cope with the fact that this wasn't a film and in a film furniture broke when you landed on it.

While she was trying to deal with that, Alais was on Martine, doing something similar to him that had been done to her. Never mind the non-breaking table, Joss grabbed the nearest thing which was, okay, a pillow, and hit Alais with it. And after the first time she decided that wasn't working and decided to hit Alais's head with the couch instead.

She got in two good knocks before Alais threw her. Then it was all spots in her head and blinding pain. She saw Alais turning to run around the couch, for some reason. Paula lunged forward, the stranger held her back. Martine and Messenger both lunged for her, at which point it became clear what she was doing when she tried to put the couch between the both of them. But when there were two of them it didn't work quite as well. She saw them lunge at her, missed the specific exchange of blows. She heard Paula scream. She saw the reflection of all of them in the window splinter into a thousand fragments of light and color.

"She'll be all right," they said. "She'll be in the hospital for a little while. But she'll be all right. They've finished picking the glass out of her, reset the broken bones, but they're going to keep her under observation. We should be able to evict her unwanted guest while she's there."

"She'll be fine," Martine said. "And so will Paula, she's with her now. We'll all be okay. You're okay, right?"

They took Joss to the doctor to confirm the pregnancy. The doctor seemed surprised that they had an idea what was going on when she was just barely past the point where the hormones and chemicals released into the bloodstream could be detected, maybe a week past. They decided against telling her that it was because they had something that could probably be termed divine help.

After the ob/gyn they went to see Paula and Alais. Two days later Alais was out of all procedures, being kept mostly for observation both psychological and physical. No one had been able to make their story match up with anyone else's in a way that satisfied the ER staff that she wouldn't try to throw herself out a window again, so she was on a suicide watch for the time being. She was taking it better than Joss thought she herself would have. Being constantly watched and monitored and not allowed to go anywhere? She'd hurt something all right, probably not herself.

In the middle of the night Joss told Martine that it was probably good, anyway. Alais was herself again, but after all the things her body had said and done, no one knew what to think or how she'd take it.

Paula was with her, too. She was with her when they came up to visit, bearing flowers and chocolates Alais probably wasn't allowed to have.

"Hey." Joss raised a hand and waggled it back and forth in a feeble wave.

"Hey."

Awkward silence. Paula and Alais had a world of hurt floating between them that Joss could almost see, and who knew how Martine saw the world these days. He was quiet. Almost completely silent, quieter than usual, although he still muttered about how he hated hospitals. He stood, behind Joss, hands on her shoulders. Paula sat on the edge of Alais's bed, holding her hand and careful of the IV. None of them knew what to say beyond the greetings.

And then Joss and Alais cleared their throats at the same time and blinked at each other as they did. Then, in staggered unison, they burst out laughing. It was just ridiculous. The two people most assertive, most dominant in the relationship taking charge at a moment when everyone was at their most vulnerable.

Joss nodded for Alais to go ahead, and she smiled a little back. "I think it's time to revisit the dynamics of this relationship."

Which got everyone into a Pavlovian state of attention. It was also less ominous than we need to talk, which they'd discovered after the second or third time re-negotiating priorities. They'd then decided on stilted, formal, but ultimately less weighted language. "Because of..." Joss confirmed, with a questioning tone and a vague gesture.

"Because of," Alais nodded. "I think... for the moment, it would be better for Paula and I to work on mending our relationship, while you two figure out... what your situation means to you. You already know I want to be here for you as much as I can..." That, she looked up to Martine for that, and her smile faded. "But ... one thing at a time. I can't... after everything that's happened, I can't be there for you in the same way. Even if I wasn't the one doing those things, as far as human memory is concerned..." Human memory. What a loaded phrase these days.

Paula looked almost surprised, but also resigned and wearily approving, as though she'd expected this. Her hand tightened around Alais's for a moment, causing the smaller woman to hiss a little as the IV was shifted, then Paula straightened a little and let go.

Martine nodded slowly. "One thing at a time," he rasped. Joss wasn't sure why his voice was so raspy but it had been, the past couple of days. "We'll be here. I hope."

Now everyone's attention was on Joss, and she wanted to be back at home in bed, maybe with Martine curled up around her. But she nodded, too. She couldn't imagine being anywhere else. And she missed her big sister girlfriend. Missed having that steadiness in her life, especially when she was facing all the stuff that she was. "We'll be here."

And just like that, it was settled.

"I'll stay in the spare bedroom when I'm in the apartment, when I can. I'll be over there when I can, and..." Alais smiled softly. "You'll be wanting your time alone with the... new developments, at least for now."

Silently, Joss thanked her for not saying _with the new baby_ when she didn't know whether or not she was going to keep it. But she nodded. She might want alone time with Martine, or just plain alone time to figure out what she was going to do. "We'll figure it out," she said aloud. Meaning herself, but meaning all of them.

Martine's smile brushed against the edges of her hair. "At this rate, we'll have to figure out how to get a bigger place," he murmured.

Paula laughed. Joss laughed too, a little. Alais smiled, but it was a smaller gesture than she would have made a few weeks ago. "Let's figure this out first, hmm? One thing at a time." She reached out her hand for one of his, and he unwrapped himself from around Joss's shoulders and took it.

"One thing at a time," Joss nodded, reaching out to lay one hand on Paula's shoulder and complete the circle.

Her smile, Joss noted, was a little wry and twisted at one corner. "Amen."

They didn't go straight home after the hospital; Martine wanted to have a bit of a walk in the open air and Joss was inclined to agree. The apartment still felt strange, after everything that had happened. After getting knocked around it more than a little. Not quite like their own, especially with repairmen stomping around and that fresh pane of glass gleaming contrast against the un-dusted windows to either side. Part of Martine's comment about finding a bigger place had come from a very real conversation she and he had had, about finding a new place to live and what they could afford on everyone's incomes, whether Paula would be with them in the house or not. They hadn't approached Paula yet, though, so Joss was careful not to get her mind set to any one thing.

"Have you seen Messenger around, lately?" Joss asked, straightening up a bit from where she'd been leaning on the railing of the bridge. It would have struck her as odd before, that the man who so disapproved of her pregnancy and excelled at lurking hadn't popped out of nowhere to lecture her any time in the past few days.

Martine quirked his head at her, then nodded. "I haven't seen him, no, but we've spoke. He called."

Joss opened her mouth to ask the first thing that came into her head, then didn't. She could check the caller ID logs instead. Then she decided she didn't want to know that badly.

"I keep wondering... why now? You've been like this for six years, maybe longer... why did he pick now to turn up?"

Martine shrugged, coming up behind her to rub her shoulders again. He kept doing that these past few days, she noticed. Not that she minded. "I don't know. Maybe this was just when he found me. Maybe he was drawn by..." one hand came down in front of her crossways and gestured, and she smiled. Despite her wariness and her instinct for independence, it was nice to feel that they had a connection in some tangible way. "I don't know."

Joss grumbled anyway. "He could have come earlier and saved us all a lot of hassle. Saved Alais a lot of hurt."

From behind her all she got was a grunt, the kind Martine gave when he didn't want to agree out loud with her aggressive opinions but did share her sentiments. She realized after he did that how strange it must be for him. Finding all of these people who knew him from his past and having no memory of them.

Yet. There was always that yet. "Do you remember anything? I mean, if you've been talking with them..."

He shook his head, pressed a kiss to the back of her head and she felt him breathing into her hair.

"Maybe eventually..." She hoped.

"Maybe." He tightened his arms around her. "I'd like to know. Just... to know. But I'm not going anywhere. Whatever they were, I've got a new family now. Even if they are all crazier than a house full of ..."

Joss's mouth twitched up a bit. "Thanks."

"You're welcome."

The air was blowing cool again. Scent of rain and that heaviness, thickness that meant there was moisture in the clouds. Joss looked up for a second before she tucked her head back down. "I think... I'm going to have this baby," she told him, but that had never been in question. "But I think I'll try and keep it. Mama can help ... and... we'll make it work, somehow." She could become a Latin stereotype if she had to. Didn't like the idea of it, but she would. Martine put an end to those musings by turning her around, pulling her closer in against him and kissing her long and deep and to hell with anyone who stared, she decided, kissing him back.

"We'll figure it out," he rasped. Grizzled. She brushed her fingertips along his chin, thinking that he should grow out a layer of scruff if he was going to keep this up.

She kissed him again and turned out to look over the bridge. "We could always move to Maine," she said. "Derry. Bangor, maybe, I hear..."

He interrupted her suggestions with tickling, as was right and proper for something that ridiculous. She squirmed and laughed, listening to the wind carry the sounds up and away and disappear into the clouds.


End file.
